Programming nRF51822 smart beacon kit

[Sarah]

Hi,

Where can I find the instructions on what tools need to be installed to reprogram the nRF51822 beacons? I haven't been able to find it in the documentation provided with the kit. I only own the smart beacons and do not have the development kit.

Thanks

[FormerMember]

In order to program the beacon not using DFU, you will need a programmer. I would recommend you to take a look at the thread "How can I program nRF51822-Beacon" .

[Sarah]

Hi Kristin,

Thanks for your response. I now have nRF51 DK like suggested, and I connected the beacon kit to the DK using the debug port, but nrf go studio still programs the DK instead of the beacon kit. Do you have any idea why? (Beacon kit does not appear on nRF go studio, only the DK does.)

[RK]

What's the voltage on your beacon kit? The JLink-OB on the NRF51-DK needs to see 3v (or more) on the external (Debug Out) VTG before it will sense the board and bypass the DK's nrf51822.

Other things to try, powering up the boards in a different sequence and only opening NRF studio after the boards are all connected. I believe once JLink has connected to a target, it then ignores other targets so you need to get it switched to external mode and connected to your board before the driver starts interrogating it.

[Sarah]

For the beacons, I'm using the 3V energizer lithium battery that comes with the beacon kit, so that should be the voltage on the beacon kit. I tried connecting the beacon kit to nRF51 DK first and then plugging the DK to the computer, but that didn't work either. Any other ideas?

[RK]

Should be more than 3.0v unless the battery is getting old when it could be marginal. As far as I can see the beacon kit doesn't have a protection diode so you should get the full battery voltage (on some of the other kits you lose 0.7v through the diode making battery power useless for debugging).

For the sake of ruling it out I'd measure it anyway or power the board from 3.3v off the DK. If that doesn't work, start back on the wiring and check it again, I don't have more ideas.

I just took my DK and used it to program an old nrf51822 eval kit, and that was fine and then I plugged it into a TI board I have and it found that with no problem too, and programmed it, so I know that debug out does work on that board.

I doubt by the way that nrfgo studio knows what's connected to the debugger, so it'll probably show 'DK', that may be unrelated to what the segger is actually programming.

[Sarah]

I checked the voltage coming from the batteries I have. One is giving me 2.8V and the other is 2.89V. Is that not enough for the DK to recognize that there is an external device on the debug out port?