Softdevice 8.0.0 on nRF51822 revision 1

[Moritz]

Hi all,

I developed a program that works fine on the dongle. The dongle has a chip with product code: N51822 QFAAG0 1342AA. When I upload the program including the correct softdevice-hex on a custom made board, it won't work. The board uses a chip with code: N51822 QFAAC0 1322AX. After reading the Ordering Information section in the datasheet and the Compability Matrix, I conclude that the dongle uses revision 2, where the custom board uses revision 1. The compability matrix also shows that softdevice 8.0.0 won't work on revision 1 (also not revision 2, but this website and my findings show it works for revision 2). Is there a possibility to make version 8.0.0 of the softdevice work on the custom board?

Thanks in advance!

[RK]

No need to guess about Rev 2 compatibility with SD 8.0, the latest compatibility matrix is here. That shows that SD 8.0 works on Rev 2 hardware, but not tested/doesn't work on Rev 1. I believe it's also recommended with Rev 2 chips to enable BLE_COMMON_OPT_RADIO_CPU_MUTEX (see the documentation for the PANs that works around).

Technically if you follow that compatibility matrix you shouldn't use an SDK later than 6.1.0 for the Rev 2 chips either as the later hardware drivers don't have all the workarounds for various issues. Fortunately it's pretty easy to mix SDKs and Softdevices because of the clear SD API.

Rev 1 however - that's certainly not tested, it's very certainly not recommended for production applications and it's very likely that it just does't work.

[Moritz]

Thank you for your answer. This was what I was looking for.