which hardware to use with nrf51822 beacon kit

[sandeep]

hi guys, I'm pretty new to nordic ble development, but I have a fair idea of the differences between EK, DK and the mbed enabled MKIT.

I'm trying to build a deploy about a 100 beacons (as a startup prototype) based on the nrf51822. Which is why, I want to spend on something that will let me do it ... rather than spend 99$ on the DK and then having to buy the "actual programmer". I'm admittedly clueless about some of this, and I will be sourcing some PTR9018 based beacons from Alibaba and then programming them myself. I need to be able to do this because we will make our mistakes and need to correct them on the field. Cant afford to take a long time to spec and code out everything perfectly before deployment.

Searching the forums here brings up posts where people have used an expensive ARM Flasher, ST-Link + OpenOCD/gcc-arm-none-eabi toolchain... even some have used arduino and nrfjprog. I have looked at CrossWorks (and am liking it), but cant seem to find anyone who has used it.

My question is this : what is the cheapest programming stack that I can buy right now that lets me use the S130 SD to develop, debug and program about 100 beacons. I will prefer being able to do it using Linux (maybe Crossworks or something?), but can use Windows if needed.

[Erik Sanchez]

The PTR9018 looks interesting to me for some personal projects that I've always wanted to work on so I'll attempt an answer here. I'm also curious about your final purchase price and how the purchase experience went if you get a chance to comment after you've ordered the product.

Be forewarned that it doesn't appear like these modules have undergone any type of FCC or CE certification so, depending on your application, you may want to take that into consideration.

It also looks like the PTR9018s are a castellated PCB that is intended to be mounted onto another host PCB. It seems like you'll need the host PCB to have appropriate GPIO brought out, a VCC connection to battery or other power source and also some type of programming header.

I evaluated Crossworks a while back because I primarily use a Mac and didn't want to use Windows for development if I didn't have to. I got it to compile my BLE application with a few hours of tweaking but it felt like a fragile situation. I also didn't want to have to tweak every example application that's provided by Nordic just to try them out. Eventually, I decided to just use the free Keil-MDK toolset and haven't looked back. I would like to use a GCC toolchain eventually but I just don't currently have the time to configure and tweak tools when I have a out-of-box working alternative.

I also have several EK kits from Nordic and have found them to be invaluable for debugging since they have all available IO brought out to headers and also a working serial console for printf style debugging. Since these EKs have a built in Segger, you don't need anything other than a free USB port.

For final hardware boards that I've built (I have 4 variants now), I ended up just using the J-Link Lite programmer that came with the $100 DK that I purchased by mistake. It was a mistake because you also need the $400 nRFgo Starter Kit to go with it (I didn't have it).

So, long story short, I use the free Keil-MDK with J-Link Lite programmer that I acquired for $100.

[sandeep]

@Erik - thanks for your detailed answer. I'm not tied to the PTR9018. As I mentioned, I'm fairly new to this and I am having difficulty parsing the chinese ecommerce sites. What components did you order for your hardware boards ? Since you have a few variants... could you drop a hint on what I should look at.

I'm not very sensitive to cost - but more around eliminating the effort of antenna design, packaging, etc. Basically, I need something that I can deploy quickly and make my mistakes.

Secondly, about the J-Link lite - you mention that it was a mistake (because of the nrfgo), yet you say that you use the Keil-MDK. How did you do it (assuming I'm really dumb at this) ?

[Erik Sanchez]

For three of the products that I've made, I ended up using the RFD22301. This is the module that's used in the RFDuino product. I've found that the price is reasonable and it works well. It has an integrated chip antenna and is FCC certified. I only have 2 complaints about the product: 1: they only brought out 7 GPIO pins, 2: They didn't use a 32kHz low frequency crystal so you'll need to use the embedded RC oscillator.

I use the J-Link lite with Keil-MDK to program the RFD22301 modules. I've made a custom host PCB for this module and added the necessary 10 pin JTAG header. For your application, you may want to just use an actual RFDuino board since they have headers on them. You could either program using the Arduino IDE or erase the chip and put a soft device and your Nordic SDK code on it. In order to do that, you'll need to rig up a connection to a SWD programmer like the J-Link.