RE: Recommended Pin Usage

Simonr — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 13:09:01 GMT

Hi Asaf

1. The recommendations for pins are arbitrary in regards to performance, they are just recommended because these will be the pins that are used by default in our SDK examples, so you'd have to configure say SPI CLK to the pin you want it to be if you're not using the recommended pin. Really, it's more of a suggestion than a recommendation.

2. No drawbacks, as all GPIOs are the same except the analog input and low drive/low-frequency pins that have some drawbacks or additional features.

3. The functions limited to specific pins are:

The NFC pins (only P0.09 and P0.010 can be used for the NFC antenna, although these can be configured as GPIOs as well if need be).
Debug pins (SWDIO, SWDCLK), TRACE pins and the RESET pin are specific to their use-cases, and other pins can not do these operations.
Pins XL1 and XL2 (P0.00 and P0.01) are the only pins that can be used as a connection for 32.768 kHz crystal (These can also be configured as GPIOs if need be).
Any other pin not described a General purpose I/O in the Pin assignments can not be used as GPIOs.

4. I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, but you can't use any other pin as a RESET pin the same way as P0.18. The other GPIOs can put the device to deep sleep (System OFF mode) which causes a reset upon wake-up, but won't be able to reset the chip if it's stuck in the firmware.

I hope these were the answers you were looking for, and if anything is unclear, don't hesitate to ask!

Best regards,

Simon