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nRF52832 development tools

JS

What development kit should I buy? Is this the right one? www.mouser.hk/.../

What software IDE to use?

  1. Does Keil offer free version for limited code size? What is the size limit?

  2. Which tools is free and un-limited code size?

  3. How is mbed? I have used mbed for simple test with STM32 Nucleo. Is this similar?

  • 0

    Hi JS,

    Yes, you need to buy the nrf52 DK. Keil offer free version, but you are limited in size code (32 kB max). You can work with Eclipse and GCC; you can search in Blogs section and Tutorials section for set up the toolchain.

    mBed is very nice for beginners, you have a Bluetooth low energy Team who helps, many examples and the nrf51 Dk is supported (mBed enabled). But for the nrf52 Dk, i don't know if it is enabled, you can search on mBed int the Plateform section: link text

  • 0
    1. 32kB - not as useful as it used to be these days.
    2. some: gcc + makefiles some people use, you can use Eclipse with a bit of setup work, Segger has Segger Embedded Studio which is free for non-commercial work, that's a rebranded version of Crossworks (which isn't free but isn't expensive for non-commercial work). Nordic provides examples in keil or native gcc (makefile) format. It's not that much work to import those into SES/Crossworks
    3. I never liked MBED at all and there are fewer examples which use it. I'd try to work at with the SDK native code and one of those tools if possible.
  • 0 in reply to RK

    Why "32kB - not as useful as it used to be these days"? Are you referring to stack getting bigger recently? How much the factory BT stack already took up and what left for user code? Keil does not limit RAM size, right?

  • 0 in reply to RK

    No I'm not referring to how big the softdevice is nor to RAM usage, just flash in use from application code. There's a reason the newer chips have more flash, code is getting more complicated, add in a few of the modules like device manager, flash storage and some others and you've already taken up a chunk of application code space, especially in debug mode.

    With the old nRF51s you might have had 128kB Flash, with 88k used for the softdevice there was only 40kB left, so 32kB limit on compilation wasn't a limiting factor. Now you have nRF52 with 512kB of flash, 112kB used for the (far more capable) softdevice, you have 400kB left. Now a 32kB compilation limit can be a problem.

    You can certainly use free Keil to mess about with the simple examples, but when you run up against the code limit you either have to buy a full version, or learn another IDE.

  • 0 in reply to RK

    Hi RK, Many thanks. May I ask if 32kB limit starts counting excluding factory provided stack and various devices managers. Are these binary and not C and not counted? Is 32kB only counts my self-written test code?

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