test the nRF51822 antenna for the first time.

[Tizana]

Hi,

I just finish designing my board and soldering it using the Bluetooth low energy nRF51822 chip and i want to test it. i want to know if i put the coin cell 3v and turn on the board the antenna will work automatically even without programming the nRF51822 chip ??

I mean after turning on the board if i use my phone and search for the Bluetooth devices can it recognize the nRF51822 Bluetooth and what's the name of it.

if not can someone give me a simple code so i can upload it to the nRF51822 to test the antenna.

what program do i use to flash the Nrf chip ? the programmer i have is this one : store.cutedigi.com/.../ is that OK??

can you provide me tutorials / docs of how to start programming the Nrf and which IDe is the best. i hope a free IDE exist. i have an experience with the Cortex microcontroller. i worked before a lot with stm32f and i use IAR Embedded workbench to coding. i use the free version with a limited 32k code program.

Best regards,

[vineeshvs]

Just got the programmer working. Need to test the bluetooth. Waiting for the answer...

[MartinBL]

Hi

When you have powered up your board, and connected the programer, and are ready to test I would recommend you to start with Nordic's SDKs. The SDK is a collection of many examples demonstrating how to to use Bluetooth, ANT and the nRF5's peripherals. A "fresh" nRF51 straight from the shop will not do anything useful so you will need to program some sort of code onto it. I would advise you to start with a simple LED blinky example just to see if your basic components and soldering are in order. Then when everything seems to be in working order you can try more advanced BLE examples.

At Nordic we mostly use Keil uVision as an IDE, but the examples support GCC and IAR as well. Keil is free with a code size limitation of 32kB which is usually more than enough for BLE applications. I believe Keil is easier to set up than GCC and you will also probably get faster and better support here on the forum and in our support portal using Keil.

When you are ready I suggest that you take a look at these tutorials from the tutorial section of devzone.

Setting up an example project on the nRF51 DK

Testing and using a simple BLE application

The tutorials are written for Nordic's development kits, but they should transfer easily to custom boards as well.

There are also getting started guides and more information and documentation on our infocenter.