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nRF9161 DK

Overview

The nRF9161 DK (PCA10153) is a single-board development kit for evaluation and development on the nRF9161 SiP for DECT NR+ and LTE-M/NB-IoT with GNSS. The nrf9161dk/nrf9161 board configuration provides support for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF9161 ARM Cortex-M33F CPU with ARMv8-M Security Extension and the following devices:

  • ADC

  • CLOCK

  • FLASH

  • GPIO

  • I2C

  • MPU

  • NVIC

  • PWM

  • RTC

  • Segger RTT (RTT Console)

  • SPI

  • UARTE

  • WDT

  • IDAU

More information about the board can be found at the nRF9161 DK website [2]. nRF9161 Product Specification [3] contains the processor’s information and the datasheet.

Hardware

nRF9161 DK has two external oscillators. The frequency of the slow clock is 32.768 kHz. The frequency of the main clock is 32 MHz.

Supported Features

The nrf9161dk/nrf9161 board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

ADC

on-chip

adc

CLOCK

on-chip

clock_control

FLASH

on-chip

flash

FLASH

external

spi

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

GPIO

external

i2c

I2C(M)

on-chip

i2c

MPU

on-chip

arch/arm

NVIC

on-chip

arch/arm

PWM

on-chip

pwm

RTC

on-chip

system clock

RTT

nRF53

console

SPI(M/S)

on-chip

spi

SPU

on-chip

system protection

UARTE

on-chip

serial

WDT

on-chip

watchdog

Other hardware features have not been enabled yet for this board. See nRF9161 DK website [2] and nRF9161 Product Specification [3] for a complete list of nRF9161 DK board hardware features.

Connections and IOs

LED

  • LED1 (green) = P0.0

  • LED2 (green) = P0.1

  • LED3 (green) = P0.4

  • LED4 (green) = P0.5

Push buttons and Switches

  • BUTTON1 = P0.8

  • BUTTON2 = P0.9

  • SWITCH1 = P0.18

  • SWITCH2 = P0.19

  • BOOT = SW5 = boot/reset

Security components

  • Implementation Defined Attribution Unit (IDAU [1]). The IDAU is implemented with the System Protection Unit and is used to define secure and non-secure memory maps. By default, all of the memory space (Flash, SRAM, and peripheral address space) is defined to be secure accessible only.

  • Secure boot.

Programming and Debugging

nrf9161dk/nrf9161 supports the Armv8m Security Extension, and by default boots in the Secure state.

Building Secure/Non-Secure Zephyr applications with Arm® TrustZone®

The process requires the following steps:

  1. Build the Secure Zephyr application using -DBOARD=nrf9161dk/nrf9161 and CONFIG_TRUSTED_EXECUTION_SECURE=y in the application project configuration file.

  2. Build the Non-Secure Zephyr application using -DBOARD=nrf9161dk/nrf9161/ns.

  3. Merge the two binaries together.

When building a Secure/Non-Secure application, the Secure application will have to set the IDAU (SPU) configuration to allow Non-Secure access to all CPU resources utilized by the Non-Secure application firmware. SPU configuration shall take place before jumping to the Non-Secure application.

Building a Secure only application

Build the Zephyr app in the usual way (see Building an Application and Run an Application), using -DBOARD=nrf9161dk/nrf9161.

Flashing

Follow the instructions in the Nordic nRF5x Segger J-Link page to install and configure all the necessary software. Further information can be found in Flashing. Then build and flash applications as usual (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

First, run your favorite terminal program to listen for output.

$ minicom -D <tty_device> -b 115200

Replace <tty_device> with the port where the nRF9161 DK can be found. For example, under Linux, /dev/ttyACM0.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nrf9161dk/nrf9161 samples/hello_world
west flash

Debugging

Refer to the Nordic nRF5x Segger J-Link page to learn about debugging Nordic boards with a Segger IC.

Testing the LEDs and buttons in the nRF9161 DK

There are 2 samples that allow you to test that the buttons (switches) and LEDs on the board are working properly with Zephyr:

You can build and flash the examples to make sure Zephyr is running correctly on your board. The button and LED definitions can be found in boards/nordic/nrf9161dk/nrf9161dk_nrf9161_common.dtsi.

References