Stack source code

[Bernard Perrin]

Hi,

we are interested about the nRF51822 BTLE chip. We already wrote a BTLE stack (slave side only) for another chip (icytrx) and we would like to port it for this chip. However, we had the impression that Nordic provides this stack in source code.

What are the conditions to get this code and from where can we get it.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Bernard

[John Kelley]

Nordic doesn't supply source code for their SoftDevice S110, just an API to interface with it as a part of their SDK.

[Bernard Perrin]

Thank you John for your fast and clear answer.

Concerning the porting of our stack, we first look into the nRF51822 documentation. We have the impression that the doc we have in hand (nRF51 Series Reference Manual 175pages & nRF51822 Product Specification v1.3 67pages) is too short. In the biggest document the dedicated part to the radio is only 20 pages long. Was someone already able to write a stack with a such documentation? How to cope with the 150µs delay between the end of reception and the transmission of a packet with a 1 µs tolerance?

[Marc Nicholas]

The stack is proprietary, provided by Nordic (who are obviously privy to the radio's specification and operation), and accessible only via a high-level API that is (somewhat) timing independent.

This silicon is not provided as a platform for others to port their stacks to. Although someone from Nordic should probably say that ;)

-m

[ovrebekk]

I don't quite agree with you there Marc ;)

We fully support someone wanting to implement their own RF stacks in the nRF51822, whether it is a completely custom stack or an alternative BLE stack.

When the Nordic BLE stack is disabled you can access the hardware registers of the radio directly on a quite low level, and you have full control of all necessary radio parameters.

To answer your question Bernard, if there is any information you can't find in the RM or the PS we will do our best to fill in the holes, either here on the devzone or through the official support channels. In principle these documents should provide everything you need to configure the chip in accordance with the Bluetooth LE specification, but there is always a chance that some information is left out.

[Ole Morten]

I accepted this answer for this question, but also see Torbjørn's comment below. It should be perfectly possible to implement a custom BLE stack on the nRF51 if anyone wants to.