External MCU with nRF51822

[tvu1020]

Hi,

I'm planning to use an external MCU to process my digital signals and send it through nRF51822. Do I need to develop an on-board antenna? TI has the module CC2541 from ChipCon where I don't need an antenna and can just send through via UART.

Please advise on any other solution with Nordic components!

Thanks, Trung

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

the nRF51822 has an ARM Cortex-M0 at 16MHz that you program it to do almost whatever you like. It has 30 i/o for you to use. This module make all 30 i/o available to you. Do you need to do a lot processing that require a second MCU ? To use with free Eclipse C/C++ development environment, follow this blog site.

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

If the M0 in the nRF51 is not require then it would be more cost effective to use something like the nRF8001 or nRF8002 or any dedicated modules and connect to your mcu via uart or spi. The CC2541 is based on 8 bits 8051 and the mcu is dedicated I don't believe it is available for application while the nRF51 on the other hand is a 32 bit mcu that can do both. The nRF51 for example allows to do acquisition and some processing along side with BLE. A keyboard or mouse is a perfect example to use this as single chip solution. It is a very capable mcu.