First steps with custom boards

RE: First steps with custom boards

MartinBL — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 08:34:06 GMT

Hi. If you haven't seen it already we have a Getting Started guide here. There you should find what you need of documentation, software, SDKs, etc. If you really need confidential support you can open a support ticket on MyPage, our official support portal. Note that there are Nordic employees working full time patrolling this forum in addition to a variety of incredibly skilled users. So if you don't really need confidentiality you should consider trying your luck here too.

RE: First steps with custom boards

Mostafa — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 08:07:49 GMT

Hello, I'm a very beginner in Nordic developing code, and almost know nothing about it, before I've been working with aurdino, atmega 16,32 and lpc2148 which implemented simple projects and worked well. Now, I have been dedicated a huge scary work and need to develop the code. In fact I have to understand the code and procedure in Nordic first, and then try to redefine the BLE protocol and add some more sensors to receive the data and transfer them through the BLE to Android for storage and observation. I need someone who is quite expert to talk to in private and show him the source code. Of course I do not expect for free. would please an expert reply my message and leave his email address. Best regards.

RE: First steps with custom boards

stunt_man — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 22:06:41 GMT

Hi Nick,

Thank you for your comment. In fact, for this custom board, I use low voltage mode (1.8V). As explained in the product spec, DEC2 is connected to VDD (1.8V).

To get this voltage from J-Link, a custom adapter is put between J-link & PCB. J-link provides a 5.0V voltage (checked with voltmeter). PCB gets 1.8V (the forementioned 1.78V voltage - checked with voltmeter).

I found two interesting questions on this forum that could help: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

I'm going to further investigate!

RE: First steps with custom boards

Nick Pelis — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 17:17:36 GMT

Your VDD seems both really low and odd. The minimum operating voltage for the nRF51 is 1.8V (from the product specification v3.1, chapter 7 "Operating Conditions"), so you're definitely out of spec. You didn't say what your design voltage was or what other components were on your custom board, but depending on your power path you might have a short somewhere. For instance if you have a short, that can overload a voltage regulator, causing your voltage to crash. What kind of current load does your board have?

RE: First steps with custom boards

stunt_man — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 13:31:04 GMT

Hi Martin,

Thank you for your reply. To explain a little bit more: everything works fine with Evaluation Kit, even debug mode and step by step debugging.

The programmer I use is a SEGGER J-LINK that detects my custom board as a CORTEX-M0.

Using Keil uVision, I can load my code on custom board. Unfortunately, when I try a debug session, I can not reach the first lines of code.

The code I use to check that everything is fine is really basic:

int main (void)
{
  int i = 0;
  i++;

  for (;;)
  {
    i++
  }
}

I will have a look on the whitepaper you mention. But this seems to be a different problem.

RE: First steps with custom boards

MartinBL — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 11:49:38 GMT

I'm a little confused. You say that you "can program my board and flash it without problem". Is that the Evaluation Kit or your custom board?

Are you able to run simple LED blinking examples on your custom board, but not BLE applications?
What kind of programmer do you use?
Your Vdd is pretty low. Are you using a Low voltage mode setup?
Are you able to debug and step through your code line for line? This is a great way to debug Nordic's examples.

You might find some interesting reads among these whitepapers. Maybe especially the papers on antenna tuning and Crystal Oscillator Design.