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Waveshare BLE400

Overview

BLE400 is a motherboard designed for BLE Bluetooth 2.4G Wireless Module. Used together with core board – Core51822.

Supported Features

Motherboard

  • Onboard battery holder, multi power supplies are available

  • All the IOs are accessible for easy expansion

  • Integrates CP2102 for debugging

  • LEDs and user keys, compatible with other official boards, easy to use

Core board

  • Onboard chip: nRF51822

  • Communication distance (open outdoor 1M data rate): 30m

  • Frequency range: 2.4GHz

  • Operating voltage: 2.0V ~ 3.6V

  • Operating temperature: -40℃ ~ 85℃

  • Expansion pinheader: all the I/Os except P0.26 and P0.27

  • Pinheader pitch: 2.00mm

  • Antenna: onboard antenna

Features

  • 2.4 GHz multiprotocol RF transceiver

  • ARM® Cortex™-M0 32 bit processor

  • 128 bit AES HW encryption

  • 256kB flash & 32kB RAM

  • Programmable Peripheral Interconnect (PPI)

  • Digital interfaces: SPI, I2C, UART

  • 10 bit ADC

  • Programmable output power: -20 to +4 dBm

  • Independent application development and protocol stack

  • Fully compatible with NRF24L series

  • Pinout compatible with NRF51xxx series

  • Global separate power management

  • Operating voltage: 1.8 V ~ 3.6 V

Revision History

Core board

In June of 2015, Core51822 and its variant, Core51822 (B), upgraded the onboard chip to Rev3 (nRF51822_QFAC) that features 32kB RAM.

Compare

Top: Core51822 Bottom: Core51822 (B)

Connections and IOs

Motherboard

BLE400

  1. Wireless module connector: for easily connecting modules like Core51822

  2. MCU pins expansion connector

  3. I2C interface

  4. SPI interface

  5. 5V/3.3V power input/output: usually used as power output, also common-grounding with other user board

  6. USB connector: USB TO UART via onboard converter CP2102

  7. Debugging interface

  8. UART interface

  9. Battery holder

  10. User LEDs

  11. User keys

  12. Reset button

  13. CP2102

  14. USB TO UART jumper

  15. LEDs & Keys jumper

Core board

Core board pinout

BLE400 dimensions

BLE400 size

Connections and IOs

LED

  • LED0 (red) = P0.18

  • LED1 (red) = P0.19

  • LED2 (red) = P0.20

  • LED3 (red) = P0.21

  • LED4 (red) = P0.22

  • SUSPEND = SUSPEND

  • RXD1 = P0.9

  • TXD1 = P0.11

Push buttons

  • KEY1 = P0.16

  • KEY2 = P0.17

  • RESET = SWDIO

I2C

  • SMBA = P0.02

  • SCL = P0.01

  • SDA = P0.00

SPI

  • NSS = P0.30

  • SCK = P0.25

  • MOSI = P0.24

  • MISO = P0.23

USART1

  • RX = P0.05

  • TX = P0.06

  • CTS = P0.07

  • RTS = P0.12

UART (USB)

  • RX = P0.9

  • TX = P0.11

  • CTS = P0.8

  • RTS = P0.10

Programming and Debugging

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 board nRF51 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 nrf51_ble400 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 nRF51 DK

There are samples below 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/waveshare/nrf51_ble400/nrf51_ble400.dts.

References