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

[RK]

No it's not necessary to purchase the nRF51 DK nor a JLink programmer, you can just use DFU.

That is however a somewhat hard way to do it. If you were going to do it once or twice, don't need to debug anything, ok probably fine, but if you're actually going to develop, put new software on it often, it's much easier to have a proper programmer and debugger. You will save yourself a lot of time.

[Sarah]

That's what I thought, but I wanted to be completely sure. Thanks very much!

[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?