nRF5280 LED5 always on after installing demo programs

[SUVOLewis]

Hi,

I received my nRF52840 yesterday, I believe I've set up my dev environment well-enough to run the demo programs supplied by Nordic (namely the proximity and heartrate monitor) demo. When I unboxed the DevKit and powered it on, I had a slow pulse on LED1, which indicates normal behaviour.

After installing nRF Connect and the programmer app, I added the HEX file from the proximity demo to the loader and chose "Write and Erase" to ensure I was writing on a clean slate. LED1 turns off, LED5 turns on and start flashing to indicate it's writing data; all good so far. The first instruction is to "Check that LED 1 on the nRF52DK is blinking. This indicates advertising."

However, LED5 is still on, and it stays on. LED1 does not blink. But here's the thing; when going onto the nRF toolbox on my iPhone, the board IS broadcasting on Bluetooth, and I CAN connect to it, and I DO get an alert when I am outside of the proximity! But why isn't the board behaving as it should? Apparently LED3 should blink when I press "find me" on the phone, the phone should have a manual alert if I press button1, but none of these work.

I've tried to wipe the firmware and reset the board by going into BOOTLOADER mode and adding the recommended .bin file it asks for, but the outcome stays the same.

Am I missing something? Why does the phone side work but the LEDs and buttons on the board not?

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

SUVOLewis

[Simonr]

Hi

LED5 is on as long as the board is powered, it is connected to the debugger, and is on as long as the board is powered (Blinking while flashing the chip). However, I just tried the proximity example myself and did not experience any faulty LEDs. LED1 blinked when advertising, stayed on when connected, and LED3 could be toggled with the "find me" button. The alarm is also working (a lot of startled colleagues can confirm that).

So I'm not sure what is going on on your side. What SDK are you using? And what .hex file did you write to the chip? ble_app_proximity_pca10056_s140.hex is the correct one.

Best regards,

Simon

[SUVOLewis]

Hi Simon,

Progress! The name of the hex file that I had did not match up to the one you've provided. However, I did get my version from the front-page downloads for the nRF52840, and I had to go through a lot of documentation to find a download link to the SDK I needed. I have currently got the nRF5_SDK_15.3.0_59ac345 SDK.

Now, LED1 blinks when advertising, and stays solid when paired. Holding button 1 will disconnect the board from the phone, and I can also disconnect via the phone. Pressing button 1 when advertising will put the board into sleep mode. Great!

However, LED3 doesn't blink when I press the 'FindMe' button on the phone, and pressing button 1 does not trigger an alert on the phone.

There must be something else I'm missing. Is there anything else I need to flash to the board? Currently, I'm only writing the ble_app_proximity_pca10056_s140.hex to the board; nothing else. Is there anything else I need to add in the flashing process? It may be something related to softdevices; I'm not sure what those are so I haven't done anything with them.

Also, where is this alarm? I can't see one on the board...

Thank you for all your help so far!