Zigbee support on the nRF52820?

[Sabari]

We would like to use Zigbeee on the nRF52820, however, it seems from other threads that neither the "nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee" nor the "nRF Connect SDK" support it, but only an emulation with nRF52833 is possible. 

Working with nRF52 Series — nRF Connect SDK 1.6.99 documentation (nordicsemi.com)

Is there any limitations we need to be aware of when trying to build a Zigbee application for nRF52820? Has anyone already developed a Zigbee application based on nRF52820 

[Marte Myrvold]

Hi,

Zigbee is not officially supported on nRF52820, so we cannot guarantee that it works. It is possible to emulate nRF52820 on a nRF52833 DK using nrf52833dk_nrf52820 as build target in nRF Connect SDK or following the guide Developing for nRF52820 for nRF5 SDK, but there are some considerations to be aware of:

• RAM and flash. nRF52833 has 512 kB flash and 128 kB RAM, while nRF52820 only has 256 kB flash and 32 kB RAM, which might not be enough. You can find an overview of typical requirements here: nRF5 SDK Zigbee memory requirements and nRF Connect SDK Zigbee memory requirements. The numbers for nRF5 SDK are based on the nRF52840 DK, so you should expect different values for other SoCs. Additionally, there are ways to adjust flash and memory requirements. For this, see Zigbee stack RAM usage configuration and Zigbee stack flash usage configuration for nRF5 SDK and Memory configuration feature for nRF Connect SDK.
• Peripheral resources. There are also peripheral differences between the two SoCs. Please see nRF52 Series comparison for comparison of the features of the various nRF52 Series devices.
• nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee v4.1.0 is based on nRF5 SDK v16.0.0, which is not compatible with nRF52820, as shown in nRF52820 compatibility matrix. This is only relevant for nRF5 SDK, as the SoC is supported in nRF Connect SDK v1.3.0 and later.

I would recommend using nRF Connect SDK rather than nRF5 SDK, as that is the SDK where active development for Zigbee is ongoing, and it will receive new features and updates. However, we have not tested Zigbee on nRF52820 in any of the SDKs, so we cannot guarantee anything. If you have questions or requests regarding roadmap, please contact your regional sales manager.

Best regards,

Marte