nRF52840 Dongle Programming

[microderm]

Hi,

I have been programming and testing ESB on the nRF52 DK using the Arduino IDE with the sandeepmistry code base, as it allows me to view serial output to a log screen on my Mac.

I am now trying to port this project to the nRF52840 Dongle, but have found it to be very different to the nRF52 DK, presumably due to not having JLink hardware.

I can build the blinky example on Segger and transfer the resultant hex file to a PC with nRFConnect, and it runs as expected. When I try to upload a hex file from my Arduino build, it does not transfer the file. The blinky file is built with MBR, the Arduino version is not.

1) The documentation says that I can program the dongle using nRFConnect. nRFConnect does not work on my computer - the software just hangs at launch. I installed nRFConnect on someone else's PC and can upload (mbr) hex files. Is there a way I can acheive this on a Mac?

2) What exactly is MBR, and can I add that functionality to my Arduino system?

3) I found only 2 example builds for the dongle (PCA10059) is there a reason for this? Can I adapt an existing example (such as the PCA10040 proprietary_rf > esb_ptx) to work on the dongle? If so, what do I need to do?

4) I'd like to adapt my Arduino IDE to include the ability to program the dongle directly (as I can with the nRF52 DK). Is this possible?

Kind Regards,

Andy

[Mac 10.13.6, Arduino IDE 1.8.15 (sandeepmistry), Segger 5.34a, nRF5SDK17.1]

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi Andy,

1) It should be possible to run nRF Connect for Desktop on a Mac. If you are not able to make this work by searching already available solutions on this forum, please post a new ticket where you describe the issue in more details, including version of nRF Connect, etc. You can also program the dongle from command line using nrfutil, see the nRF52840 Dongle Programming Tutorial for more details 

2) See above linked tutorial.

3) The Dongle is not intended for application development, due to the lack of J-Link/debugging capabilities. To limit the number of customers starting development using the dongle, the available examples for this platform is limited. The Dongle is mainly intended for use together with our tools (nRF Connect for Desktop BLE application, OpenThread Border Router, etc). It is possible to adapt most examples to run on the dongle, as described in the above tutorial, but note that the debugging capabilities are limited, and we may not be able to help out with issues on this platform. There are solder pads on the back of the dongle, to mount a debug header, if you have a Nordic DK/external J-Link debugger available. For development, we recommend using our Development Kits

4) I'm not familiar with the Arduino IDE, and this is not something we provide support on. You should ask this question in a Arduino forum, or hope for an answer from the community in this post.

Best regards,
Jørgen