NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Carl Richard — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 07:41:54 GMT

Good to hear. I agree that the liknes between the "nRF Connect Programmer" and "nRF Connect SDK" probably is a source of confusion that should be dealt with.

It was my pleasure. Good luck with your project and happy new year!

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Dark Monk — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 17:01:26 GMT

Thank you again Carl. I installed and played with the nRf5 SDK last night and was able to setup my custom and get blinky to run on it, in just under 2 hours. It took over 5 days with the nRf Connect SDK and me being a complete noob. That the nRf5 SDK install tool chain includes installing nRf Connect for the programmer, is probably a place where confusion can happen pretty easily. Unless you really read closely, it does look like the nRf Connect SDK is your latest and greatest and recommended for new development. Again, thank you for your feedback and the incredible work the Nordic team is doing.

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Carl Richard — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 10:16:37 GMT

Hello again!

My pleasure. Great to hear that you finally got it up and running and thanks for your the elaborate description of your experience. That is valuable for both us and other customers! There is unfortunately some confusion regarding the differences between our two SDKs and we should strive to make their differences clear. While the nRF Connect SDK does support the nRF52 series, we still recommend using the nRF5 SDK for these devices as it's much more mature, with more support material. You could not know this on beforehand, though.

I will make sure to bring up your comments internally.

Also, make sure to dig through our tutorials here on DevZone. For example this one on the nRF5 SDK as well as the user guide for nRF52810 development on the infocenter.

Have a good day and best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Dark Monk — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 18:35:07 GMT

Thank you Carl. I finally got blinky to run on my custom board with the 25810 chip (through the debugger only), and posted my success online (it was a struggle to get there). A very experienced Nordic developer contacted me and we got to talking about all the problems I have been having and how incredibly difficult this initial setup has been. Through that conversation I discovered that I was basically using the WRONG SDK (nRf Connect) for what I was doing. I am building a basic LED controller that uses ble on an 25810. From everything I have been able to find since learning this, it appears the nRf5 Sdk is a much better fit for this and a TON easier to setup and use.

I would REALLY like to see Nordic put out a recommendation guide on when SDK to do what with for the absolute beginner (just a bit frustrated atm that I wasted days on nRf Connect). A lot of the documentation is trying to do a "whole system" documentation approach, and for the beginner we don't have time to read everything to get a full understanding of it all and then make key decisions like which SDK to use. Simon's tutorial is SO AWESOME, because it walks you through learning specific parts by actually doing the most common things needed and explains just the parts you need and and just the right level. It is education focused not documentation focused. It is the difference of focusing on the reader vs what the writer wants to publish.

I started researching the nRf5 SDK and found this GREAT youtube series (link below for anyone interested). That is probably the most helpful stuff Nordic could have for learning the SDK for beginners. There really needs to be something like this on what SDK and chip to use for different levels of application dev. This will make your products much more accessible to the newer maker / developer who are mainly looking at Arduino and lower end competitors (who are getting better all the time). If there is going to be two main SDKs that both look like they are going to be used indefinitely, PLEASE document in the tutorials and posts which one is being solved for (dts files don't exist in nRf5 for example) and have some guides on which to do what with for the people that are brand new to this stuff. It is VERY confusing and hard to get started in with the current training methods (more of a documentation than training approach).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiKJljyEUlZj4z8RqJKTaoMpSqjLdBGO4

I will be switching to nRf5 this weekend and expect to have MUCH fewer problems with initial setup or even writing my application. Guessing all of the above problems will be solved with this also.

Again, THANK YOU for taking the time to respond and I hope this feedback helps Nordic which will also be helping folks like me.

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Carl Richard — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 12:22:37 GMT

Hi, Dark!

Great that you are progressing with help from Simon's tutorial. I will make sure to let him know! I will also forward your comments on our documentation internally, so that we hopefully can update it to be more informative. As for your questions:

1. As you noticed the project must unfortunately be reloaded with changes to the dts files, but generally it should not be necessary to change the dts file as you can use a .overlay file instead. These are project and board specific files that are used to provide alternative configurations for the peripherals defined in the board definition.

2. Using the .overlay files I think you can avoid creating an entirely new board file, as the changes required for your custom design can be defined there. There are several usage examples among the nRF samples in the SDK, you can for example look at "<ncs_root>/samples/nrf9160/udp". In your case, the overlay should be named "nrf52dk_nrf52810.overlay".

3. Could you elaborate on this a little? When using "Open nRF Connect SDK project" it should be possible to update the configuration and pre processor options using "Project/Configure nRF Connect SDK project..." and by right clicking the "Project 'app/libapp.a'" and selecting "Edit Compile Options".

4. You are correct in your assumption that your device can be debugged directly from SES. In addition you can do logging over the Segger RTT interface.

Hope this answers some questions and please reach out if you have any more.

Note that we are understaffed due to the holidays, so you can expect longer respons times. Sorry for the inconveniece and happy holidays!

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Dark Monk — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 21:19:23 GMT

HUGE discovery and WTF moment on dts changes. First read the tutorial from Simon here. ALL OF IT. It is awesome. https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/nrf-connect-sdk-guides/b/getting-started/posts/nrf-connect-sdk-tutorial---part-1-ncs-v1-4-0

Second, dts file changes require that you reopen the project through the "Open Nrf SDK Project" interface to take effect (at least that is the recommended method I have found so far). I lost a day or more thinking my changes weren't in the correct place or ?. WHY THE HELL don't dts changes just update in the project when you re-compile the main project code? Grrrrrrrr. You basically have to rebuild/re-import the entire project. This also appears to be the case if you do a local overlay file for board specific stuff. This is SUPER FRUSTRATING. That said, I bet there is a good reason for it that I don't know, but damn that just cost me a lot of time and isn't explained anywhere I have seen besides Simon's tutorial.

That answered number 1 and I bet I can get number 2 working now that I know this.

Seriously though, SIMON... I LOVE YOU. That tutorial should be put on the MAIN nRf Connect SDK site. It is VERY helpful in understanding the architecture.

RE: NRF52 dk to 52810 - basic setup help... please

Dark Monk — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 20:38:40 GMT

OK.. I may have unlocked a big understanding piece to all this. This tutorial from Simon is helping A LOT - https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/nrf-connect-sdk-guides/b/getting-started/posts/nrf-connect-sdk-tutorial---part-1-ncs-v1-4-0

It is the case that when I download the program to the chip, and then run debug in Segger, it is debugging directly from the RF52 DK board chip? It is not doing some sort of chip emulation in Segger just so I can test the code. It is actually getting feedback and examining what is going on, on the actual chip that is running the code?

Sorry if this seems really stupid, but I have 25 years of application development not chip level stuff, and this is quite different from how app development debugging works (sort of). But FUCKING COOL if this is the case.

This would answer my question 4 above. And help for many other things also. Damn this would be cool if this assumption is accurate.