nrf51822 module

[sundeep]

Hi,

i have purchased the following module

However, after connecting the VCC and GND to 3.3v DC supply the module is not detected. My questions are :-

1. Does this module come with firmware preloaded, or does one have to load it

2. If the latter, i.e. it has to be loaded - vs using a JTAG or JLINK for some other programmer, can this be done by directly connecting the SWDCLK, SWDIO line to a FTDI or say an Ardunio i.e. use either an FTDI device or an Arduino as a programmer. If yes, could someone please guide me to the appropriate link

3. I also read somewhere, that OTA programming of this module is possible. So will also be curious to understand exactly how ?

regards

[endnode]

You need some SWD (Serial Wire Deboug - 2-wire standard interface used by smaller ARM cores but compatible with JTAG) device for debugging and programming of nRF51&nRF52 chips (once you have some serial bootloader in the firmware - which could use UART for instance - then you can continue without it for FW upload but not for classical halt/step-by-step/run debugging). So FTDI or Arduino tools won't help you with that. There are more options for SWD debugging of ARM Cortex-M processors such as nRF51/52 but I'll list 3 most common:

• LPC-Link originally meant for NXP LPC Xpresso product line - you can get as cheap as 15EUR (+ shipping?), e.g. see Embedded Artists shop here.
• ST-LINK originally meant for STM8 and STM32 product lines - you can get it on various ST Micro development boards ("Discovery" being the cheapest options, starting at 7~10EUR + shipping), see various options such as this one at Mouser.
• SEGGER J-Link universal programmers which come in various packages and licenses directly from SEGGER or in bundles with other development boards (either separate or "on-board"). You can get EDU version as low as 60EUR (+ shipping) but the best option today is grabbing nRF52 DK (or nRF51 if you want to use that particular chip variant for development) which starts at 40EUR (+ shipping) because it has SEGGER J-Link OB (which is then usable for SWD debugging/flashing of any compatible ARM Cortex-M) and you can directly prototype with the nRF5x chip on it (and switch to custom HW later).

Now first two options (LPC and ST Link) are theoretically usable with nRF5x but as there are no out-ot-the box support in Nordic and Segger tools for them you will need to look here at forum (at least for ST-LINK you should be able to find some cook books e.g this ST-Link + Keil uVision) and around internet how to make it work. However I like ST-LINK for STM32 and LPC-Link for NXP chips I would never recommend to save 30EUR and bother with anything else then SEGGER J-Link once developing on nRF5x chips. You might get that way once you are skilled with particular STM or NXP tool chain but then you aren't posting such questions to this forum...;)

Cheers Jan

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

A good option here. Full support for nRF51 & nRF52. Supported by all IDE including OpenOCD and Eclipse on all platform Windows, OSX & Linux