How to set up GCC and Eclipse for development on the beacon kit

[wim]

Hi,

I am looking to select a bluetooth chip for a new project, one of the criteria is access to free development tools. I see that in the SDK GCC is supported. But: how do I set this up? Is there some guidelines or user manual? And what is this soft device? Is there a step by step tutorial or something to get started? I would like to start off from the beacon example, and from there on add things, like communication to an SPI device from the microcontroller.

Any help is very welcome, find it very difficult to find an entry point...

[wim]

Hi,

Ok, will check this out. One question already though: can I use this on a MAC? I found this blog: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

But there I need to download also the S110-SD-v7, but that is not unlocked using the serial number of the beacon kit. So I need to buy an additional RF51 DK for that? (already bought 3 beacon kits...). Or is they S110-SD-v7 nothing but the hex file which I can also find in the beacon kit example software directories?

I want to use the bluetooth beacon feature, but also would like to microcontroller to talk to another peripheral device via SPI, the beacon kit seemed to be well equipped for that, to build my proof of concept. And would like also to use an external interrupt to count pulses. So: which example do I start from?

I did this already on a bt chip from TI, so, I have my application firmware available already, I would just like to port it to this platform now, as I believe the nRF chip will be a more future proof choice.