Getting started laying out board for BLE development, and developing under linux

[jwhitmore]

Yes there are development boards available to shortcut design and development, but I'm only evaluating without a product in mind and want to layout a minimalist board, with a suitable chip for BLE development under Linux. Searching keeps leading me to development boards. There is a search string but so far I've not fund it.

Obviously I need power, programming header and... ?

[Jared]

Hi,

I'm not sure what the specific question is. If the development kit doesn't fit your needs then i would suggest that you take a look at the reference design for a description on how to design a custom board. 

Best regards

Jared

[jwhitmore]

I'm not a Windows user and the documentation points to nRFgo studio which is only available for windows. I don't actually have a windows machine at present. I've downloaded the sdk and there is an example application:

nordic/examples/ble_peripheral/experimental_ble_app_blinky

That example contains a 16k main.c file so that obviously doesn't include the Bluetooth stack. So how is this compiled into a Hex file for flashing into the target device?

Given the learning curve here I started looking at a nrf51 USB Dongle dev board, which includes a SEGGER J-Link. I've used the J-Link in the past from Linux, so that's not a problem. But is it possible to build the blinky project? There's probably a document somewhere which I've missed.

[RK]

ok. nRF51 is Nordic's older chip, the nRF52 has been out for a few years now, all the recent development and latest SDKs are really aimed at that chip. I'd really recommend getting the nRF52840 DK, you're going to find the learning curve a lot less steep if you do. It's about $50 and that includes the embedded JLink and most GPIOs broken out and LEDs and buttons and .. all sorts of other stuff. 

nRFgo studio is old, now they have nRF Connect for the desktop and mobile and it's available for windows, OSX and Linux, in fact pretty much everything Nordic currently releases is cross-platform. 

The nRF52840 DK documentation is here, and that gives some guides to getting started and getting your first blinky app working. If you read through that should give you a pretty good guide, there are also lots of other getting started resources on the Nordic github somewhere however I'm afraid someone else is going to have to point you to those as I had gotten started quite a long time before they made an appearance. 

Nordic has also licensed Segger Embedded Studio, which is a cross-platform IDE, for users of their nRF series. All the example projects for nRF52 in the SDK come ready to open in SES and build and put on the board. So you can download the IDE, for free, run it, get your free license and open up any of the dozens of example projects right out the SDK, upload them to the board with the onboard Segger, run and debug them, literally with a press of a few buttons. I don't think there are SES projects for the older nRF51 examples, which is another reason to start with the more recent device. There's a getting started guide for SES here. I know there are also video guides, google knows where they are. 

[jwhitmore]

Thanks a million RK. that was a great help. I ordered up an nRF52 based dev board:

ie.farnell.com/.../2842319

I'm kinda confused as that web page states that it's for developing applications for "nRF52810 and nRF52832 SoCs". I'm looking at it wondering are there two target devices on it. It'll all become clear when I get my hands on it early next week.

In the mean time I installed s132nrf52611.zip and nRF5SDK153059ac345.zip and am looking at the examples in the SDK, specifically 'nRF5_SDK_15.3.0_59ac345/examples/peripheral/blinky'. Again a bit confused as the target boards listed in the directory seem to be "pca10040, pca10040e, pca10056, pca10056e, & pca10059". Not of which tally with the manufacturer's part number of that part on Farnell NRF52-DK. I might have the wrong soft device and wrong SDK but again hopefully it all becomes a bit clearer when I have the part in my hands.

Thanks again for your help.