ble uart example using nRF51822 pca10005 board

[mukesh]

I want to implement uart over blutooth. I am using nRF51822 ic and pca10005 board with nRF6310 development board. I am confused about the softdevice. Which softdevice and sdk I should use for my ic that i mentioned above. How can I control the radio using the softdevice. Is it possible to control the radio without using the softdevice.

[MartinBL]

Hi. First you will need to find out what nRF51 version is mounted on the PCA10005 board. You can do this by reading the markings on top of the IC. It should read nRF51822 QFAAG0. Then have a look at the Compatibility Matrix to find out what Softdevices and SDKs are compatible to your board. The QFAAG0 is a 2nd revision IC so as you can see in Table 4 in Compatibility Matrix V2.4 you can use SDK V6.1.0 or earlier and S110 V7.x.x or earlier. S110 is proven to work on 2nd revision ICs, but SDK V6.1.0 is not compatible with this S110 V8 which means you will have to write your own drivers and libraries (might be a lot of work).

The Softdevices are Nordic's proprietary Bluetooth Low Energy protocol stacks. The stack handles all radio communication for you. Use the examples in the SDKs and read the tutorials to learn more.

It is possible to write your own custom radio protocol using the nRF51. An example of a non-BLE radio protocol is Nordic's proprietary stack "Enhanced ShockBurst" (ESB).