Have an nRF52832 "dev board" and a BME280 breakout board, where to start?

[ANTALIFE]

Hi All

I am a newbie with the nRF52 series SoC's and my end goal is to make a solar powered weather station.

I have a very crude nRF52832 dev board that I program with a SEGGER J-Link, and some BME280 & SGP30 breakout boards. So far I have done the basics like:

• Blink an LED
• PWM an LED
• Send stuff over TTL serial

Now I am trying to communicate with the BME280 over I2C/TWI but am finding myself a bit stuck as I don't really know where to begin. So far I have:

• Had a look at the Nordic LM75B TWI example and made a copy of the project
• Downloaded the official BME280 drivers and imported them into above project
• Had a dig through this recommended blog post

At this point it seems like I have most of the info I need but I can't seem to piece everything together. So with that said would you guys be able to recommend a strategy for this newbie?

Cheers, Anton

[awneil]

ANTALIFE said:

I am a newbie with the nRF52

Do you have experience with any other microcontroller(s) ?

Do you have experience with programming in general? 'C' programming in particular?

I would strongly recommend that you get a Nordic Dev Kit - as that will give you documented, ready-to-go examples, and people here will know the board.

It will also be the target of all Nordic's tutorials, demos, etc.

It also has a built-in J-link to download & debug your code - which can also be used to download & debug external targets.

Once you have gained experience on the DK with the nRF product and the tools, then you will be in a position to move on to "custom" hardware...

Start here:

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Get-Started

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/short-range-guides/b/getting-started/posts/introduction-to-bluetooth-low-energy-and-ble-devel

This does assume that you are already familiar with 'C' programming for embedded microcontrollers.

[ANTALIFE]

Most of my programming experience is with Arduino (so AVR's) but I have also been working with STM32's at work for the past year, so this is why I decided to make a project with the nRF52.

In terms of C experience I think I know enough to do basic stuff, though this is my second time trying to talk with a sensor over i2c, first was on the STM32 project.

Yea getting a proper dev kit would have been the wise decision. I know that my crude dev kit works so for now I will try and use the i2c/twi scanner example and see if I can pick up the sensor address. From that point will try and read a value from the ID register (like other people suggested)

[awneil]

ANTALIFE said:

getting a proper dev kit would have been the wise decision

You could still do it ....

I would suggest that it would be a good investment

[haakonsh]

I also suggest using a logic analyzer as it will show you what's actually going on the bus. It's the only proper way to learn how I2C/TWI works IMHO.