nRF51 DK flashing other chips

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Emil — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:17:40 GMT

I understand that the dev board already has a chip on it, and that you can program others. But when you develop stuff like this, you'd want at least one more to communicate with. For prototyping purposes it's just easier for me to have a version with breakout boards.

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

RK — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:28:01 GMT

I'm confused by this thread. You said you were thinking of getting a DK and asked what to do with the 5 chips. I wonder if you realise that the samples are just part of the dev kit, and not that important a part. The DK is a board with an nrf51422 already on it, with buttons and LEDs, crystals, a UART connection, antenna, everything fully functional, working, with a segger programmer on board ready for development. You can take it out of the box, connect it up, start working and download code to it for testing.

You can also, later, if you have a custom board at some point in the future, use the DK to program that. This makes the DK pretty economic, you get everything you need to develop plus effectively a JLink you can use to program other boards (heck mine even programs TI boards!).

If you were thinking you had to solder one of the supplied chips to get started, you misunderstood.

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Nguyen Hoan Hoang — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 17:49:40 GMT

By default it is not factory programmed but can be programmed Softdevice 8 + DFU before shipping if requested. BTW a CMSIS-DAP jtag is also available if you wish to program it yourself. Command line program to flash Softdevice + firmware + DFU all at once is provided (no merge hex require) for OS X and Windows.

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Emil — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 17:38:42 GMT

Nice! Do the chips come with preloaded bootloader so I can update them OTA? Standard from factory, that is!

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Nguyen Hoan Hoang — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 17:36:57 GMT

Yes, there is a breakout board option offered. On the right hand side you can select the optional break PCB. All the i/o of the module are also routed out to the pins.

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Emil — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 16:28:20 GMT

Thanks! That looks good, but a shame that no such breakout board is offered directly along with the kit. I guess I have to learn how to be a soldering ninja.

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Nguyen Hoan Hoang — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 16:13:11 GMT

Try this module here and this blog show how to setup and work with free Eclips GCC and example code both nRF51 and iOS.

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

Emil — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 13:39:04 GMT

Thanks! I don't have equipment and experience to do such soldering. Do you know of any minimal boards? Redbearlab?

RE: nRF51 DK flashing other chips

RK — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 13:37:04 GMT

No they are 5 chips on tape cut off a reel. They would need to be soldered, I assume professionally/commercially as they are just bare chips. I've lots at least one strip of mine, they're really rather tiny.

Once you built a board and got the chips mounted on them and all the ancillary components added, crystals, power supply etc, then you can flash them with the DK's debug out. That's the easy bit however, you'd have to design and build a board first.