Do i need motherboard for NRF51822 BLE UART?

Question

I'm working on the iOS app to interact with Arduino boards. On Arduino side i use "transparent" serial implemented in HM-10/11 firmware. So i just wire HM-10/11 RT/TX pins with Arduino ones and it works just perfect and write to specific characteristic to send data and subscribe/read to some specific to read from BLE module. No need to use any SDK or BLE library in arduino sketch, no need to modify bootloader.

Now i need to support NRF51822 BLE chips. Nordic has implemented UART serial in firmware sources but for my NRF51822 board (purchased on ebay) it's not uploaded to the chip by default as i can't see 0001 service and 0002 and 0003 characteristics. Do i need to purchase NRF motherboard and compile and upload this firmware? Can i do it without purchasing this dev kit? Can i upload over USB only or over BLE too?

Answer 1

If your are using NRF51822 standalone module ,then to update its firmware through SWIO/SWCLK pins ,you need a compatible JTAG programmer/debugger (you can check in segger website) . You can use Keil IDE to upload your updated firm ware to the flash memory of NRF51822 .

Answer 2

Although you need to upload using a SWD programmer, you are not limited to Segger. There are open source alternatives like the Black Magic Proble which you can flash into $5 hardware (stm32f103 boards) from ebay.

You are also not limited to Keil or IAR for your compiler toolchain.

Its possible to compile using Eclipse and GCC ( Nordic have a blog entry in how setup an Eclipse base dev environment) You can even program these devices using the Arduino IDE.

It is possible to upload OTA, but you would need to flash an OTA bootloader onto the device first using SWD and even then, you would probably need to upload via a mobile phone, as Im not aware of any PC ble devices that support transfer via the DFU protocol ( though some may exist)

These devices do not natively support USB. Some boards using these device have a separate processor that allows upload as if the chip was a mass storage device, but I am not aware of a motherboard into which you could plug this module, which has that functionality.

BTW. The module you linked to, is actually designed and manufactured by Waveshare.com . Take a look at their website, it has full documentation on the hardware including schematics

Answer 3

The nRF51 and nRF52 dev boards has an onboard Segger / JLink. So then you can develop on and debug on the nRF51822 and flash other nRF51822s as well.