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nRF51822 external crystal problems

brian fleming
I have searched your forum and have found several references to my issue; however, I have not been able to get anything resolved.
I am using the nRF51822 which is part of the RAYTAC MDBT40 module.
I am using your ble_app_uart_pca1028_s130 as my base code and have not modified anything critical, only the nus_data_handler to process the data received from the smart phone.
The code is working perfectly on your nRF51 Development Kit and if I upload to the RAYTAC development board with the nRF51822 on their module, it continues to work perfectly.
When I mount the RAYTAC MDBT40 module on our board, the problems begin.  When the board is powered up, a 32KHz sine wave appears on XL1, but when I upload our code, the sinewave stops.  I am able to do other uploads, but the chip appears to be dead otherwise.
We are using the exact same EPSON crystal as RAYTAC, 32.768kHz, load capacitance of 9pF with two 12pF caps going to ground at XL1 and XL2. The traces to the crystal are as short as possible and equal length, and there are no parallel traces in the crystal circuit.
I have used crystals on other processors, tone generators, precision oscillators etc., but have never experienced a problem like this.
Any assistance would be appreciated.
  • 0 in reply to brian fleming

    I was going through my notes on programming the RAYTAC MDBT40 Module and I found the following:

    The device must be flashed with the correct SoftDevice,  flash_s130_nrf51_2.0.1_softdevice.

    It's been a long time since I had to do this, but I found how to do it in the Kiel IDE.

    I did a full erase, flash of the SoftDevice, and flash of our firmware, and the device is advertising now with the correct device name of course.

    The reason I did not need to flash the SoftDevice to the RAYTAC development board to make our firmware work is because they already had the SoftDevice installed to make their test code work.

    I think we can consider this support request closed.

    Thank-you very much for your timely response to my question.

    Cheers,

    Brian fleming

  • 0 in reply to brian fleming

    Yes, after your last answer from Sharon I was going to suggest that. Glad to hear you solved it! Slight smile

    Have a great day!

    Cheers,

    Øyvind

  • 0 in reply to Øyvind

    Thank you again! For smaller organizations like us who do not have a large engineering department, your support is critical!  Actually, the only time I had ever flashed the SoftDevice was when I flashed your development kit when I first started using it about a year ago, good thing I made some notes at that time. 

    Cheers,

    Brian

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