nRF51822 Beacon - starting with OSX

[polwart]

So I have bought some nRF51822 Beacons to develop with. It was suggested when I purchased them that I wouldn't need any further development kits - but whilst I can see the devices on a phone quite happily, I don't see where to start with configuring them.

What I want do (at least initially) is simply "tell" the mobile device when one of the switches in pressed.

I am using OSX (10.7 but upgrading is possible). If I had to I could borrow a PC but would prefer not to.

Have I been mislead and actually need a development kit (which is best?)?

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

It is not necessary to have a dev kit. You need a JTag probe compatible with the nRF51. Segger is the officially supported. You'll to be very good at soldering and to solder the jtag wiring on the beacon module.

For OS X development, you follow this blog to setup Eclipse and GCC. embeddedsoftdev.blogspot.ca/.../ehal-nrf51.html Example codes for BLE with iOS code as well. Although there are not yet any Beacon example on the blog site, it could serve as base setup for development. You can compile the beacon code from the Nordic SDK.

[polwart]

That sounds encouraging. Soldering onto the board? I'm assuming there is an alternative? The Beacon claims to support over-the-air updates...