Application Controller Interface (ACI) or similar for SPI communications to nrf53811

[MrFoley]

In the past we had a C based product that communicated from our Host processor over SPI to an nrf8001 peripheral using an Application Controller Interface (ACI) provided as part of

a Nordic SDK (the \Nordic\ble-sdk-efm32-master.)

This allowed us to send commands ie. (Retrieve the device's version information,  Request the Bluetooth address and its type, etc) by sending a command via SPI to the nrf8001.

We have a new project which has a nrf52811 connected to our Host processor via SPI, similar to the example described above.

We need the same capability, to be able to send commands from our Host (STM32) processor to the nrf52811 over SPI to get device information, etc.

I’ve searched through the information at the Nordic infocenter, but it’s not at all obvious to me what is the path (if any..) to find a similar Application Controller Interface (ACI) or similar interface  that will allow us to send commands via SPI to the nrf52811.

Any suggestions?

Thank you!

[Edvin]

Hello,

I believe the Serialization Library may be what you are looking for. When you use the nRF as a connectivity chip, the only thing running on it is the softdevice, and the serial interface over which it receives commands on what softdevice calls to do. This is designed as a radio and BLE stack slave to be controlled by another MCU, such as the STM32.

It requires some porting to run the application from the STM, but there are several others that have done something similar.

I see that the S112, which is the softdevice for nRF52811 has an SPI project as the connectivity chip (slave), but we don't have any projects that uses this. There is a project for the application chip using the HCI (uart), the SDK15.3.0\examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_hrs\pca10040\ser_s112_hci, but it shouldn't be too much of a job to change the hci transport layer with a SPI. 

Best regards,

Edvin

[Edvin]

One of our American FAEs has written a short guide on getting started with serialization. Attached here:

Serialization Port Information V0.3.2.docx

It is written for an older SDK version, which didn't have the S112 softdevice, but it may still be relevant. I can recommend reading through it.

Best regards,

Edvin