Basic Arduino setup with nRF8001 Development Kit

[Will Rust]

If I've missed some documentation on the use of Nordic Semiconductor's nRF8001/nRF24L01+ Adapter for Arduino, I apologize but I couldn't find any.

Steps I've taken:

1. Attached the 'Adapter for Arduino' to a working Arduino UNO (actually tried on 2 of them).
2. Attached the nRF2740 to the adapter.
3. Uploaded the ble_uart_project_template
4. Installed nRF UART on iPhone 5

The nRF UART app is never able to find or connect.

[David Edwin]

You may want to import the latest Arduino code delivered at github.com/.../ble-sdk-arduino

Make sure that you read the readme file in the top level, this will give you the information on the pin connections required for the Nordic Arduino shield.

• Open the Serial Monitor window using Tools -> Serial Monitor in the Arduino IDE to receive error and status messages and to send data from the PC to the phone.
• Set the line ending option in Serial Monitor to "New Line"
• Set the baud rate in the Serial Monitor to "115200 baud"

The pin settings for the Nordic board should be:

/*    Tell the ACI library, the MCU to nRF8001 pin connections.    
The Active pin is optional and can be marked UNUSED    */              

/* See board.h for details REDBEARLAB_SHIELD_V1_1 or BOARD_DEFAULT
*/
aci_state.aci_pins.board_name = BOARD_DEFAULT;  

/* SS for Nordic board, 9 for REDBEARLAB_SHIELD_V1_1  
*/
aci_state.aci_pins.reqn_pin   = SS; 

/* 3 for Nordic board, 8 for REDBEARLAB_SHIELD_V1_1    
*/
aci_state.aci_pins.rdyn_pin   = 3; 

aci_state.aci_pins.mosi_pin   = MOSI;    
aci_state.aci_pins.miso_pin   = MISO;    
aci_state.aci_pins.sck_pin    = SCK;        

aci_state.aci_pins.spi_clock_divider          = SPI_CLOCK_DIV8;

/* 4 for Nordic board, UNUSED for REDBEARLAB_SHIELD_V1_1
*/
aci_state.aci_pins.reset_pin     = 4;

aci_state.aci_pins.active_pin                  = UNUSED;   
aci_state.aci_pins.optional_chip_sel_pin = UNUSED;

[Will Rust]

There we go!

I had been using github.com/.../ble-sdk-arduino and assumed that because this came from one of Nordic Semi's own repos that it would default to their own hardware and not RedBear's. I should have looked at the code before asking.

Thank you very much for your help.

[David Edwin]

My apologies on this issue. We will be fixing the github release so that it will support the Nordic boards better and work with redbearlab so hopefully we can have a common pin configuration to make it easier for users.

[Ole Morten]

I'd be happy if you could accept the answer that you found useful to clear up this question! :-)