Enabling the UART through the J-Link Lite interface

[Jim]

I have been successfully communicating with the PCA10001 evaluation kit using the virtual serial port that is exposed by the J-Link interface on the board.

I've now moved to my own hardware, and I'm using the J-Link Lite interface. I am able to download firmware and use the NRFGo Studio to install the Soft device, so I know my board is working and the interface is functioning.

However, there are no COM ports exposed by the J-Link Lite, so I can't see console output from my device.

Has anyone had trouble getting the COM port to work on the J-Link Lite? Has anyone managed to do it?

[Ole Morten]

As it seems you have found out, the Segger chip on the Evaluation Kit has an additional feature of showing up as a serial port, and transmits the data received on the separate UART interface from the nRF51822 to the PC.

The J-Link Lite does not have such feature, and if you need to get UART data from your custom board, you have to use some other UART-to-RS232 converter and connect it to pins configured as UART on your nRF51822.

Since the nRF51822 does not have any tracing hardware, there is unfortunately not any other way to get UART data over.

[dbuijsma]

Please note that the newer J-Link versions include a Virtual Comport which you can enable using J-Link Configurator. I am not sure if this is the case with the Lite models, but you can check. In the Segger JLink manual, check 14.1.3 Pinout for SWD + Virtual COM Port (VCOM).