Development Tools and environment.

[Julian]

I am using the nRF51822 to communicate with a HRM (and nothing else), but I intend to use the power of the ARM to control other sensors and process the received data. I use Keil as my IDE of choice and already own a few JTAG interface pods. Will the evaluation board be sufficient for me to develop my application? I get a little confused between the capabilities of the Eval and Development kits, oh yes, and the nRFgo Studio, which doesn't appear to support the nRF51822 - I installed it and there appears to be options only for the 8001 and 8002 - although there is a link to it from the nRF51822 page. Also, can I download any application software that will help me, particularly in pin allocation for the SPI interface. I need this as I will be building my own radio board using a balun and chip antenna and would like to make it compatible with your various tools in case I need to use them later in the design process.

[Ole Morten]

You can refer to this question for an explanation of the difference between the kits. I guess the primary difference for you is that the Evaluation Kit does not support programming custom boards, so you will need an external J-Link in addition. If you have this from before, the Evaluation Kit should be fine. Note that both kits can run all examples, but most of them will need some pin modifications to be used on the Evaluation Kit, due to the reduced number of LEDs and buttons.

nRFgo Studio can be used to program nRF51822, but there isn't any other functionality for it. To get started, you should take a look at chapter 3 of the User Guide for the kit you use, for instance this for the Evaluation Kit. It walks you through the basic setup steps.

[Julian]

Thank you for your reply. The Evaluation kit will suffice - subject to the resolution of a few issues.

It would appear that the Evaluation board is configured as a remote device (with S110) while the dongle is configured as a central. I need the opposite (S120 in the evaluation board) as I am developing a Bluetooth Central application.

I tried to download the SDK to get some application software, but it is locked.

I use the Keil U-Link 2 debugger pod, which supports 2-wire serial debugging, do you know of any reason why I cannot use it with the nRF51822?

Which nRF51822 pins do you use for SPI comms on you development hardware?

[Ole Morten]

All nRF51822 chips are blank, so they can be used for any BLE softdevice. The SDK is only available with a product key that comes with the kit.

The U-Link can be used to program and debug from Keil, but our PC-tools does not support it, so you can not use our tools to program a softdevice. This means that you'll still need an external J-Link for this, when programming custom boards.

All digital interfaces can be mapped to any GPIO, so you can choose SPI interface pins freely.

However, I think my original reply answered the original question here, so if you agree, I'd be happy if you could click the "Accept as answer" button below it, to clear up this question. :-) If you have any further, unrelated questions, please post them separately.