Nordic nRF52-DK

The nRF52 Development Kit is a single-board development kit for Bluetooth Smart, ANT and 2.4GHz proprietary applications using the nRF52 Series SoC. This kit supports both development for nRF52832 SoCs.

Table of Contents

  1. Features
  2. Firmware Update
  3. BLE stack
  4. Usage with Arduino shields
  5. Other Resources
  6. Example programs
  7. Known issues

The kit is compatible with the Arduino Uno Revision 3 standard, making it possible to use 3rd-party shield that are compatible to this standard with the kit.

The kit supports the standard Nordic Software Development Tool-chain using Keil, IAR and GCC. The kit also supports ARM mbed tool-chain for rapid prototyping and development using mbed’s cloud-based IDE and tool-chain with an extensive range of open-source software libraries. Program/Debug options on the kit are Segger J-Link Lite for standard tool-chain and CMSIS-DAP for mbed. The kit gives access to all I/O and interfaces via connectors and has 4 LEDs and 4 buttons which are user-programmable. A range of software examples are available from the nRF5 SDK to support Bluetooth Smart, ANT and 2.4GHz applications.

/media/uploads/andrzej_z_krakowa/nrf52_dk_pinout_armmbed_enabled_v2.png

Features

  • Nordic nRF52 System-on-Chip combining Bluetooth v4.2 compliant 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio, On-chip NFC tag and ARM® Cortex®-M4F processor on a single chip optimized for ultra-low power operation
  • Arduino Uno Rev. 3 compatible connector for use with 3rd party shields
  • All I/O and interfaces available via connectors
  • USB drag and drop programming and USB Virtual COM port for serial terminal
  • Segger J-Link and CMSIS-DAP interface for programming and debugging from offline tools and pyOCD
  • pluggable NFC antenna
  • Connector for RF measurements
  • Pins for power consumption measurements
  • Accepts power through:
    • USB
    • External source (1.8V-3.6V)
    • Single 2032 coin-cell battery, onboard battery holder

Firmware Update

The latest Arm Mbed DAPLink interface firmware for the nRF52-DK is available at (click the image):

DAPLink firmware for Nordic nRF52-DK

Source: https://github.com/ARMmbed/DAPLink

BLE stack

Nordic Semiconductor provides a wireless protocol stack called the SoftDevice. The SoftDevice is precompiled into a binary image and functionally verified according to the wireless protocol specification, so that all you have to think about is creating the application.

compiled binary size

For the default DK mbed target, any mbed build tools (online IDE, mbed CLI) will put the SoftDevice and the user application together into a binary file intended to program your development kit. Be aware of the SoftDevice size – it adds more than a hundred KB to any compiled binaries.

Further information about the type of Nordic’s target is available in nRF5 ReadMe.

Usage with Arduino shields

The nRF52 Development Kit board has an I/O expander to avoid conflicts with boards that follow the Arduino standard. The on-board GPIOs for the buttons and LEDs would otherwise possibly conflict with such boards.

Information

Mbed shields like many other shields do not expose the ICSP block. For these shields, the pin DETECT of the ICSP connector of NRF52-DK should be grounded manually to disable the I/O expander and release LEDs and buttons GPIOs.

Table 1. GPIO connection
GPIOPartArduino
signal
P0.13Button 1D2
P0.14Button 2D3
P0.15Button 3D4
P0.16Button 4D5
P0.17LED 1D6
P0.18LED 2D7
P0.19LED 3D8
P0.20LED 4D9

The I/O expander will release these GPIOs for general use when the nRF52 Development Kit is used together with boards that follow the Arduino standard. As an option the I/O expander can be permanently enabled by shorting solder bridge SB18 or permanently disabled by cutting the shorting track on SB19. You must also short SB18 when cutting SB19 for full compatibility with the Arduino standard.

Other Resources

You can find detailed information about this platform on the nRF52 DK page.

For any nRF52-DK related questions you can also search and post questions on NORDIC DEVELOPER ZONE

Example programs

Examples for nRF52-DK are available via GitHub, e.g. mbed-os BLE examples

Known issues

Impossible to debug or flash an application with IAR using CMSIS-DAP.

  • Description: It is not possible to flash or debug an application with IAR on the Nordic target. This issue is caused by a bad interaction between CMSIS-DAP IF present on the Nordic boards and IAR CMSIS-DAP debug driver.
  • Workaround: The best solution is to switch to the JLINK IF image and configure the IAR project to use it.
    • Download the JLINK IF and install it on the board.
    • Open the exported project in IAR then go to its options.
    • Go to the debugger section
      • In the setup tab choose J-link/J-trace as the debug driver.
      • In the Download tab disable the Use flash loader(s) option.
      • In the Extra options tabs, tick the Use command line options and add the following content: --drv_vector_table_base=0x0

 Buy Now