I have the nRF51 Dongle and an nRF51822 BLuetooth Smart Beacon kit. For software tools I have IAR's EWARM 6.7 for a complete IDE or command line GCC/GDB.
Are there any pointers on how to get started writing Bluetooth enabled applications that do not involve the Keil tools?
I've seen references to PCA10031 and PCA10028. The nRF51 Dongle has a label that reads PCA10031 V1.0.0 -- what is the PCA10028?
Any and all help appreciated.
PCA10028 is the relatively new nRF51-DK board that uses NRF51422-QFAC with 32k RAM. It is supported by the new 7.1.0 SDK. This SDK does not contain example IAR projects, but between the 6.1.0 IAR example project setups and 7.1.0 example project source code it didn't require too much effort to get IAR working with the new DK, SDK and softdevices. I've not used the smart beacon kit, hopefully the situation is the same.
Here is an IAR project for examples/ble_peripheral/ble_app_hrs/pca10031/s110 in the 7.1.0 SDK. I do not have PCA10031, this was tested with PCA10028 by changing the compiler board type definition. See the included README.txt file for other details. Again, I hope this helps.
PCA10028 is the relatively new nRF51-DK board that uses NRF51422-QFAC with 32k RAM. It is supported by the new 7.1.0 SDK. This SDK does not contain example IAR projects, but between the 6.1.0 IAR example project setups and 7.1.0 example project source code it didn't require too much effort to get IAR working with the new DK, SDK and softdevices. I've not used the smart beacon kit, hopefully the situation is the same.
Here is an IAR project for examples/ble_peripheral/ble_app_hrs/pca10031/s110 in the 7.1.0 SDK. I do not have PCA10031, this was tested with PCA10028 by changing the compiler board type definition. See the included README.txt file for other details. Again, I hope this helps.
How can I get the 6.1.0 IAR example project setups? I've been looking all any SDK before the SDK_7 changes and haven't found anything yet.
Here you'll find a link to ble_app_hrs.zip from the 6.1.0 SDK with a working IAR project and some other IAR-related info. I still find the earlier SDK downloads available associated with older nrf51422/822 DK product keys, but I don't think you really need this. Using the 7.1.0 SDK you should be able to point to the app and SDK source files, and make appropriate changes to compiler include paths and definitions. Basically add the iar/ project to examples/ble_peripheral/ble_app_hrs/pca10031/s110 in the 7.1.0 SDK, get it set up like the arm project. You can see the project setup in plain text in the Keil project file, or you could install the Keil MDK and use that to browse the project setup. Depending on the softdevice version used, you may have to change the .icf file. Hope this helps.
Are there any plans to actually support IAR in SDK 7 and later? If not, could you please make the full SDK 6.latest available? I've spent almost 20 hours trying to get to the point where I can use a modern IDE to build code and debug. The closest I've come is a DOS command line make and text-mode gdb. The Eclipse instructions in the app note don't work because they were written for the structure of pre-SDK 7. There are no IAR projects in SDK 7 and I don't have the Keil tools.
The hardware of the nRF51822 is ideal for my project but I don't know if this state of churn with the software tools will be acceptable.
Hopefully someone from Nordic will help you with the 6.1.0 SDK, it seems a reasonable request given the absence of IAR support in the new 7.x.x SDKs. In general things can be made to work with IAR but direct support is sparse, Keil definitely seems to be the preferred platform. After getting IAR projects set up initially, it really hasn't been difficult or time consuming to keep up with the SDK updates.
