nr51822: No radio with custom PCB

[Henry]

Hi,

I have created a custom PCB that more or less follows the Nordic SmartBeacon design: Beacon_V2.pdf

Instead of BAL-NRF01D3 I used the BALF-NRF01D3 as this is supposed to be compatible with the QFAAG0 chips, which I use.

So now, when I load the SmartBeacon FW, everything seems to operate fine: LED pulsing, change to orange LED on button press (DFU mode)...

But what is missing is that I cannot capture any signal on my iPhone on the custom PCB... With the original Smart Beacon HW everything works fine. On the custom PCB I use the same shape and dimension PCB antenna.

I already switched from external 32Mhz crystal to internal but everything stays the same.

Now, how can I find out what is going wrong? Is there a way to see wether the soldering of the Balun was ok?

Thanks for your help!

Henry

[Henry]

Hi Audun, Thanks for your comment. Sorry, my bad. I have the mandatory X1: 16MHz and the optional LF X2 with 32.768kHz. In order to see wether the soldering of X2 might be the problem, I did change the FW to use the internal clock and the result was the same, although you could see with the oscilloscope that X2 was not active in that case. So the LF crystal seems to operate fine.