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Programming Custom Board using nRF52 DK

Bill Westlake

We have an nRF52 DK and have developed a customer board.  On the custom board we have a header with pins for power, ground, clock, and data.

When I connect this to the nRF52 DK according to information here I can program the custom board, most of the time.  However, periodically, it will act as though it programmed but the firmware does not run.  I have tried this from J-Link and SES.

I have a contractor doing some design for me, and he tells me that we also need to disconnect power from the nRF52 chip on the DK before we program, but I can find nothing about this on this site, and I prefer not to make changes to this dev kit.

I am looking for some guidance because, when we go into production we are going to need to program these devices on the custom board successfully every time.  As it stands I often times have to reprogram it 10 or 12 times before it works.

I am sure that it is not a lose connection or something not connect properly as i have checked this many times.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Bill Westlake, SE, Unified Business Technologies

  • 0 in reply to awneil

    I'm just the software guy, the hardware people didn't put the reset line on any of the headers.  I will ask the Chief Engineer but I am sure they won't be spinning a new board any time soon.

    How does the reset line help with loading firmware?  I am sure the chief engineer will ask!

  • 0 in reply to awneil

    Actually, the CE says he knows why so that the programer can reset the processor before it loads.  He is going to put in a line so we can test that.  

  • 0 in reply to Bill Westlake

    Example: If the code gets stuck in a low-power mode, where the debugger is disabled - a hardware reset can recover from that.

  • 0 in reply to awneil

    I see.  So if we hook up the reset line, do we connect it to the reset header on the DK during programming?

  • 0

    Hi,

     

    When I connect this to the nRF52 DK according to information here I can program the custom board, most of the time.  However, periodically, it will act as though it programmed but the firmware does not run.  I have tried this from J-Link and SES.

    If the flash content is verified successfully, it might indicate that the firmware isn't running as it should. Try entering debug mode and see what the device executes. 

     

    I have a contractor doing some design for me, and he tells me that we also need to disconnect power from the nRF52 chip on the DK before we program, but I can find nothing about this on this site, and I prefer not to make changes to this dev kit.

    I am looking for some guidance because, when we go into production we are going to need to program these devices on the custom board successfully every time.  As it stands I often times have to reprogram it 10 or 12 times before it works.

     As previously mentioned by , you need to power your custom board. I usually recommend that you power it from the DK itself, to ensure that the voltage is equal on both DK and custom board, but a 3V source shall be fine.

    If your custom board has a coincell battery, it might be that this has been drained too low for the DK to successfully detect the voltage.

     

    For production programming, you shall use a dedicated debugger made for this purpose (See seggers website: https://www.segger.com/products/debug-probes/j-link/). Our DK's are meant as a development platform only, and shall not be used in any production programming setup.

    Kind regards,

    Håkon

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