Eagle CAD, et al. about nrf51-devel

[nocko]

Kris Winer [email protected] writes:

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for sharing this project. I am in the process of designing
something similar, but with a smaller footprint. Is there some way to
import your schematic and board design into Eagle CAD? I'll probably
just make it from scratch using your schematic as a guide.

There's no way to directly import it. Eagle isn't great software anyway.

You may be interested to know that I did some contract work for a
company recently. They decided to spin off the dev. platform I made for
them into an OSHW project. It was designed in Eagle (a requirement from
them). It's not posted yet (we're waiting for the first batch of
boards). I can link you to it once it's released (a month or two).

My earlier board has no low-frequency crystal which is pretty helpful
(otherwise you have to synthesize a low-freq clock from the 16Mhz
crystal which takes more power).

Also, do you know of a tutorial that shows how to program the device
through the JTAG connector?

I use gcc and the j-link tools with a j-link lite-m tool from Segger.

My work flow is based on this github repo:
https://github.com/hlnd/nrf51-pure-gcc-setup

I've made some local changes... but it's a good start. If you open the
Makefiles under the 'templates' folder you'll see commands like
JLinkExe, JLinkGDBServer, &c used in the scripts. These are from the
JLink tools released by Segger for use with their SWD/JTAG
adapters. They sell an EDU kit that's good (but you're not supposed to
develop comercial products with it) for $80. You can also by the Nordic
development kit for $99 that comes with a J-Link Lite-M adapter and some
sample daughter boards. You can't use the boards on their own with out a
more expensive host board... but I designed an OSHW host board you can
use to play with them (let me know if you order the kit). With the kit
you also get a license to use the softdevices; useful for actually using
the wireless.

I have an nRF51822 mKit development board that I have been playing
with using the mbed compiler. It has a debugger built in. I might be
able to use it to program a custom board like yours.

I would like to learn how to use this chip well. Any suggestions for
sample programs/projects that I could learn (copy) from? Thanks for
your help.

There are very few tutorial-style articles on this platform. I've spent
most of my time reading the example code (in the Nordic SDK).

Good luck!

Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0x6FDA11EE 3BC412E3)