nRF52810 with Central + Peripheral and Bootloader

[DD_connectivity]

Hi,

Nordic Part Used in Design: nRF52810

SDK version used 16.0.0.

We found for nRF52810 it supports peripheral mode as well as bootloader. I didn't find any example code regarding central role. Does nrf52810  supports Central + peripheral soft device?

We have following requirements.

• We need Central role for for scanning Microlise BLE devices.
• Peripheral role for NUS service.(UART over BLE).
• Bootloader for uprading firmware over UART

Kindly guide.

[Simonr]

Hi

The nRF52810 does support being a central,  but it is not very well suited as one due to its limited RAM and Flash memory. The S112 SoftDevice only supports peripheral/bootloader applications and is the most commonly used SoftDevice for the nRF52810. However, the nRF52810 can also be used with the S132 SoftDevice, which supports central application as well. The issue is that the S132 SoftDevice is larger in size and takes up more space in Flash than the S112 SoftDevice, and a central application (especially one implementing multiple peripherals and a bootloader) will take up more space in Flash than a simple peripheral does. 

For your requirements, I would recommend looking at the nRF52832, nRF52833, or nRF52840 which have more storage than the nRF52810/11 and is better suited for central applications that also needs a bootloader, etc.

Best regards,

Simon

NOTE: I see that this case is almost identical to Microlise's own support ticket, so I've replied with the same answer here as well but would prefer it if we could stick to one of the tickets from now on.