Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

RE: Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

dossalab — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:56:57 GMT

Ok, thanks. I'll try internal oscillator.

RE: Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

Jørgen Holmefjord — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 10:13:13 GMT

The external crystal is not required, but you need to set the clock config corresponding to the clock source available on your board. The synthesized clock is not tested/supported by the softdevice. We recommend using the internal RC oscillator if no external LF-crystal is available.

RE: Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

dossalab — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 18:22:23 GMT

We found a problem and it was not related to flashing, but SoftDevice related. Board has no LE crystal and for some reason (may be it was clearly stated somewhere, but I designed this board based on reference manual) LE crystal is required for SoftDevice to work. So I changed config file (SoftDevice clock section, select synthesized instead of crystal) and now demo runs fine. I was unable to find an issue with debugger because with softdevice stlink + openocd + gdb were working poorly.

So anyway, thanks for your support and I think this issue can be considered solved.

RE: Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

Jørgen Holmefjord — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 09:46:36 GMT

Did you ever flash any arduino bootloader or similar to the board? If you have not done that already, you should erase all flash in the nRF52832 device and try again.

The only supported debugger for the nRF5 series ICs are J-Link, so it makes it much harder to get help from us if you use 3rd party tools. At a minimum, we recommend having a nRF5 DK available, as this includes an J-Link OB debugger that can be used to flash/erase/debug external designs.

RE: Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

dossalab — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:42:36 GMT

Hi Jørgen,

I've tried with mergehex utility, but it seems not working too. I've also tried with Arduino, and interestingly, it worked. I think implementation there is basically a set of wrappers above the original SDK so I am confused why I cant flash and run samples from SDK itself :) I've also tried older SDK 11, without any success.

Unfortunately, I don't have any official Nordic development boards nor J-Link to verify this behavior. I used to experiment a bit on custom NRF boards without SDK (only bare registers), so I'm sure that my St-link works ok.

RE: Unable to flash compiled demo from NRF sdk

Jørgen Holmefjord — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:05:00 GMT

Hi,

You can merge the softdevice with your application using mergehex utility. You should then be able to flash a single file using gdb.

Have you verified that the application works on a Nordic DK or another board? Do you have a J-Link device/Nordic DK that you can connect to your board to verify if you are able to flash it correctly using that?

Best regards,
Jørgen