What is the hardware requirements for an external MCU to run a serialized connection with Nordic BLE module?

[jyang]

Hi,

I have a product and want to update it with a BLE functionality. The product has EFM32 Giant Gecko MCU (ARM M3). 

I want to know if it is powerful enough to run an BLE application on this MCU with a serialized BLE module connection. I understand that the Nordic SOCs all have a M4 core with more hardware resources, such as RNG and FPU etc. 

Thank you in advance

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

If you use BLE serialization the SoftDevice (BLE stack) will run on the nRF, so most of the BLE processing and all time critical tasks happen there. This allows you to use a quite simple MCU as host processor. We do not have any example code for other MCU manufacturer, but you can see how this works by referring to the Serialization documentation.

[jyang]

Hi, 

The BLE part of application will be scheduled by the current firmware RTOS. Do you have any information or instructions on implementation of Nordic BLE application on other RTOS?

Thank you for your help 

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

We do not have a lot of documentation on that specifically as the SoftDevice itself is RTOS agnostic. You can see examples of the SoftDevice used with FreeRTOS in the nRF5 SDK, though not with serialization.

[jyang]

Hi,

Does Nordic have a customer service design tool and an example of implementation of it?

Thanks

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

I am not sure what you are asking for. Can you elaborate?