I'd like to start developing with the nRF51822, and have found the two kits supplied by Nordic, the nRF51822 Evaluation Kit and the nRF51822 Development Kit. What's the difference between these, and which one should I buy?
I'd like to start developing with the nRF51822, and have found the two kits supplied by Nordic, the nRF51822 Evaluation Kit and the nRF51822 Development Kit. What's the difference between these, and which one should I buy?
The difference is primarily that the Development Kit is made to be used with the nRFgo Starter Kit, while the Evaluation Kit is a standalone kit.
With the Development Kit, you get two different modules that fits on the nRFgo Starter Kit, one with a PCB antenna an done with an SMA connector. The motherboard from the nRFgo Starter Kit is then used to provide power and I/O access. It also has 8 buttons and LEDs, an RS232 level converter and comes with a small LCD display. The Development Kit also comes with a separate J-Link Lite programmer that must be used to program the modules, but can also be used to program a custom board. Please note that this programmer only works on 3.3 V, so if your board runs on something else, this will most likely not work without an external level converter. The Development Kit also includes an nRF51 Development USB dongle, which is a small dongle with a Segger programmer chip and an nRF51822 chip. This is used for example as the dongle for the Master Control Panel.
With the Evaluation Kit on the other hand, you get this same dongle and just one other board, the Evaluation Kit itself. The Evaluation Kit board is a stand-alone board that includes an on-board Segger programmer and has two buttons/LEDs. The Segger chip also provides a virtual serial port that can be used to talk to the nRF51822 from the PC. Most importantly, the Evaluation Kit does not come with a separate programmer that can be used to program custom boards.
Which one to buy is therefore mostly a matter of cost and features needed. You get access to just the same SDK, softdevices and apps. There are more ready-made example applications for the Development Kit than for the Evaluation Kit, but most of them can be made to run on the Evaluation Kit as well by just doing small pin-out modifications to the code (and possibly adding more buttons/LEDs). There are no functional differences with regard to the chip itself.
The Evaluation Kit should be available for USD 99, while the Starter Kit and Development Kit should be available for USD 399 plus USD 99. The nRFgo Starter Kit can also be used with development kits for most of our other chips, so if you or your company have previously used another Nordic chip (for example the nRF24-series), there most likely exists a Starter Kit somewhere that can also be used with nRF51.
The product pages of the kits (Starter Kit, Development Kit, Evaluation Kit) shows what is included, and the user guides which are available without any product key, as long as you are signed into MyPage (Starter Kit User guide, DK User Guide, EK User Guide), also include more information on the kits’ contents and features.