Arduino Core for Adafruit nRF52 Feather Boards

BSP Installation

There are two methods that you can use to install this BSP. We highly recommend the first option unless you wish to participate in active development of this codebase via Github.

Recommended: Adafruit nRF52 BSP via the Arduino Board Manager

1. Download and install the Arduino IDE (At least v1.6.12)
2. Start the Arduino IDE
3. Go into Preferences
4. Add https://www.adafruit.com/package_adafruit_index.json as an 'Additional Board Manager URL'
5. Restart the Arduino IDE
6. Open the Boards Manager from the Tools -> Board menu and install 'Adafruit nRF52 by Adafruit'
7. Once the BSP is installed, select 'Adafruit Bluefruit nRF52 Feather' from the Tools -> Board menu, which will update your system config to use the right compiler and settings for the nRF52.

Optional (Core Development): Adafruit nRF52 BSP via git

1. Install BSP via Board Manager as above to install compiler & tools.
2. Delete the core folder nrf52 installed by Board Manager in Adruino15, depending on your OS. It could be

• OS X : ~/Library/Arduino15/packages/adafruit/hardware/nrf52
• Linux : ~/.arduino15/packages/adafruit/hardware/nrf52
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Local\Arduino15\packages\adafruit\hardware\nrf52

3. cd <SKETCHBOOK>, where <SKETCHBOOK> is your Arduino Sketch folder:

• OS X : ~/Documents/Arduino
• Linux : ~/Arduino
• Windows: ~/Documents/Arduino

4. Create a folder named hardware/Adafruit, if it does not exist, and change directories to it
5. Clone this repo: git clone [email protected]:adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Arduino.git
6. Restart the Arduino IDE
7. Once the BSP is installed, select 'Adafruit Bluefruit nRF52 Feather' from the Tools -> Board menu, which will update your system config to use the right compiler and settings for the nRF52.

Third Party Tools

nrfutil

The Adafruit nRF52 BSP includes a python wrapper for Nordic's nrfutil, which is used to flash boards. Go into the BSP folder (hardware/Adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Arduino/tools/nrfutil-0.5.2), and run the following to make this available to the Arduino IDE:

$ cd tools/nrfutil-0.5.2
$ sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
$ sudo python setup.py install

Notes : Don't install nrfutil from the pip package (ex. sudo pip install nrfutil). The latest nrfutil does not support DFU via Serial, and you should install the local copy of 0.5.2 included with the BSP via the python setup.py install command above.

Arduino BLE Application Support

This Arduino core contains basic BLE peripheral mode helper classes and an initial peripheral mode API. These helper classes and APIs aim to make it easier to work with the Nordic SoftDevice that contains Nordic's official Bluetooth Low Energy stack. You are also free to use the Nordic SDK to generate your own example code, since all of the SoftDevice header files are included in your projects by default.

To see a list of example sketches that make use of these helper classes, select the appropriate board from the Tools > Board menu item, and then in the Examples menu look for the list of examples sketched for the selected board.

Bootloader Support

Third Party Tools

To burn the bootloader from within the Arduino IDE, you will need the following tools installed on your system and available in the system path:

Jlink Driver and Tools

Download and install the JLink Software and Documentation Pack from Segger, which will also install a set of command line tools.

Burning the Bootloader

Once the tools above have been installed and added to your system path, from the Arduino IDE:

• Select Tools > Board > Adafruit Bluefruit Feather52
• Select Tools > Programmer > J-Link for Feather52
• Select Tools > Burn Bootloader with the board and J-Link connected

Manually Burning the Bootloader via nrfjprog

You can also manually burn the bootloader from the command line, you will need nrfjprog from Nordic:

• Download nRF5x-Command-Line-Tools for OSX/Linux/Win32
• Extract the downloaded file and add the extracted path to your environment PATH variable
• Check to make sure you can run nrfjprog from your terminal/command prompt

OS X Note At present, you will need to create a symlink in /usr/local/bin to the nrfjprog tool wherever you have added it. You can run the following command, for example:

$ ln -s $HOME/prog/nordic/nrfjprog/nrfjprog /usr/local/bin/nrfjprog

Then run the command as follows:

$ nrfjprog -e -f nrf52
$ nrfjprog --program bootloader_with_s132.hex -f nrf52
$ nrfjprog --reset -f nrf52

Misc Notes

nRF52DK Jlink Issue on OS X

If developping with the nRF52DK on OS X, there is a bug where only 64 bytes can be sent over the USB CDC interface, which will prevent you from using the serial bootloader from the Arduino IDE with an error like this:

Upgrading target on /dev/cu.usbmodem1421 with DFU package /private/var/folders/86/hb2vp14n5_5_yvdz_z8w9x_c0000gn/T/arduino_build_267869/nRF51Blinky.ino.zip. Flow control is disabled.


Timed out waiting for acknowledgement from device.

Failed to upgrade target. Error is: No data received on serial port. Not able to proceed.

Possible causes:
- bootloader, SoftDevice or application on target does not match the requirements in the DFU package.
- baud rate or flow control is not the same as in the target bootloader.
- target is not in DFU mode. If using the SDK examples, press Button 4 and RESET and release both to enter DFU mode.

To resolve this and enable 512 byte packets over USB serial, you must disable the Mass Storage Device interface on the JLink-OB, which will free up two of the 512 byte USB end points. (For details see this article.)

You can do so by running JLinkExe from the command line, and then entering the MSDDisable command, and power cycling your nRF52DK. To re-enable MSD support, do the same but enter the MSDEnable command.

Credits

This core is based on Arduino-nRF5 by Sandeep Mistry, which in turn is based on the Arduino SAMD Core.

The following tools are used:

• GCC ARM Embedded as the compiler