how to enter beacon config mode

[John]

Hi, it says that I have to put my beacon into beacon config mode in order to configure beacon device through the app. How do I enter beacon config mode in my nRF51dk? When I tried to update the beacon, I couldn't detect the it. I tried pressing button 1 and button 2 but nothing changed.

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Hi John

Yes, the beacon example in the SDK seems to be a lot more simple then the beacon app for the beacon kit. It simply advertises, but is not tuned for any update/configuration capability.

As an option, I suppose you could port the beacon app for the beacon kit to the nRF51 DK board. Should be a matter of remapping buttons and leds to the nRF51 DK board.

Update 23.2.2015 The nRF51 SDK can be found here. If you download the zip file you will find the beacon app for the nRF51 DK under \nRF51_SDK_7.2.0_cf547b5\examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_beacon\pca10028\s110\arm.

You will most likely not see any leds light up on the nRF51 DK when using the beacon app from the "nRF51822 Beacon v1.1.0" installation. That is mainly because of two things

• The Beacon kit has RGB leds but the nRF51 DK has on/off leds.
• The LEDs and Buttons on the nRF51 DK are mapped to different GPIO pins then on the Beacon kit.

So to see what GPIO pins on the nRF51 are mapped to the LEDs on the nRF51 DK, look at the \nRF51_SDK_7.2.0_cf547b5\examples\bsp\pca10028.h file, where all button and led mappings are set for the PCA10028 board.

In the beacon app for the PCA20006 (the beacon kit), you will see that the RED, GREEN and BLUE is assigned for pins 16, 12 and 15 respectively in file \nRF51822 Beacon v1.1.0\Source Code\examples\bsp\pca20006.h

To get started, you can modify the beacon_setup function in the \nRF51822 Beacon v1.1.0\Source Code\nrf51_beacon\ble_app_beacon\main.c file to toggle pin 21 (LED 1 on the nRF51 DK board) instead of calling the led_softblink_start function. Do that with first enabling GPIO pin 21 as output in , and then toggling it:

nrf_gpio_cfg_output(21);
nrf_gpio_pin_toggle(21);

[Ole Bauck]

Replace BOARD_PCA10028 with BOARD_PCA20006 in preprocessor symbols. This will make the project use the pin definitions (in pca20006.h) for the beacon kit.