nRF52840 Dongle to Connect Android Phone with Laptop App

[GaryD]

Hello,

I am using a combination of several Nordic devices and hardware.  The nRF52832 is used in a sensor to collect light level information.  That data is transported over an HTM like connection to an Android phone where the nRF Toolbox source was used to develop a user interface for my client.  That is all working very well.

Now I need to transport some entered text in the Android App along with the measurement to a laptop for storage of the data.  I plan to use the rRF52840 dongle to connect via a Nordic UART connection from the Android (as central) to nRF52840 dongle/laptop as a peripheral connection to the Android.phone.  I plan to modify the Nordic nRF Connect PC source code to capture and store the data.

Does the approach of using the dongle make sense and, if so, is there an SDK example to use for setting up the UART connection to the laptop?  The UART example in SDK5 does not support the PCA00059 board type.

I appreciate any suggestions you can provide.

[haakonsh]

See USBD BLE UART Example and PCA10059 Programming. 

[GaryD]

Thank you Hoakonsh - I will try it.

[GaryD]

I tried to program it.  PCA10059 is not a directory in the SDK 15.3.0 USBD_BLE_UART project - only PCA10056.  

I tried to load the dongle from the SES IDE and that does not work due to no emulator support.

I tried to take the hex file and use  nRFGo Studio to program it and it tells me I have to put it in DFU mode.  Can you tell me how to put it in DFU mode and load it?

Gary

[GaryD]

Can I use an nRF52832 DK board to connect up to the nRF52840 Dongle as if it was a custom board via the sw clock and sw data signals and use the nRF52832 based DK board to load and debug the '840 dongle?

[haakonsh]

Yes :) there's pins for SWDIO and SWDCLK on either side of the "neck" of the dongle. There's also a footprint for a 6 or 10 pin debug connector. 

Alternatively: nRF52840 Dongle Programming describe how you can use the bootloader to program the device with new FW.