Thingy:52

Board Overview

Thingy:52

Name:

thingy52

Vendor:

Nordic Semiconductor

Architecture:

arm

SoC:

nrf52832

Browse board sources

Warning

Nordic Semiconductor no longer offers support for this board, so it is not recommended for new prototypes.

Overview

Zephyr uses the thingy52/nrf52832 (PCA20020) board configuration for building for the Thingy:52 board. The board has the nRF52832 MCU with ARM Cortex-M4F processor, a set of environmental sensors, a pushbutton, and two RGB LEDs.

• ADC

• CLOCK

• FLASH

• Gas sensor

• GPIO

• GPIO Expander

• Humidity and temperature sensor

• I2C

• MPU

• NVIC

• Pressure sensor

• PWM

• RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy)

• RGB LEDs

• RTC

• SPI

• UART

• WDT

More information about the board can be found at the nRF52 DK website [1]. The Nordic Thingy:52 guide [2] contains the processor’s information and the datasheet.

Hardware

Thingy:52 has the following features:

• Two RGB LEDs

• CO2 and TVOC sensor

• Humidity and temperature sensor

• Color sensor

• I2C GPIO expander

• Provisions for a pin header and I2C and serial connectors

• Bluetooth radio

Supported Features

The thingy52 board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board

Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.

2 / 2

Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.

vnd,foo

Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

thingy52

/

nrf52832

thingy52/nrf52832 target

Type	Location	Description	Compatible
CPU	on-chip	ARM Cortex-M4F CPU1	arm,cortex-m4f
ADC	on-chip	Nordic Semiconductor nRF family SAADC node1	nordic,nrf-saadc
ARM architecture	on-chip	Nordic UICR (User Information Configuration Registers)1	nordic,nrf-uicr
	on-chip	Nordic nRF family BPROT (Block Protection)1	nordic,nrf-bprot
	on-chip	Nordic EGU (Event Generator Unit)6	nordic,nrf-egu
	on-chip	Nordic nRF family MWU (Memory Watch Unit)1	nordic,nrf-mwu
Audio	on-chip	Nordic PDM (Pulse Density Modulation interface)1	nordic,nrf-pdm
Clock control	on-chip	Nordic nRF clock control node1	nordic,nrf-clock
Comparator	on-chip	Nordic nRF COMP (analog COMParator)1	nordic,nrf-comp
Counter	on-chip	Nordic nRF timer node5	nordic,nrf-timer
Cryptographic accelerator	on-chip	Nordic ECB (AES electronic codebook mode encryption)1	nordic,nrf-ecb
	on-chip	Nordic nRF family CCM (AES CCM mode encryption)1	nordic,nrf-ccm
Debug	on-chip	ARMv7 instrumentation trace macrocell1	arm,armv7m-itm
Flash controller	on-chip	Nordic NVMC (Non-Volatile Memory Controller)1	nordic,nrf52-flash-controller
GPIO & Headers	on-board	SX1509B GPIO1	semtech,sx1509b
	on-chip	NRF5 GPIOTE1	nordic,nrf-gpiote
	on-chip	NRF5 GPIO1	nordic,nrf-gpio
I2C	on-chip	Nordic nRF family TWIM (TWI master with EasyDMA)2	nordic,nrf-twim
I2S	on-chip	Nordic I2S (Inter-IC sound interface)1	nordic,nrf-i2s
IIO	on-board	Description for a voltage divider, with optional ability to measure resistance of the upper leg1	voltage-divider
Input	on-board	Group of GPIO-bound input keys1	gpio-keys
Interrupt controller	on-chip	ARMv7-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1	arm,v7m-nvic
LED	on-board	Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1	gpio-leds
Miscellaneous	on-chip	Nordic FICR (Factory Information Configuration Registers)1	nordic,nrf-ficr
	on-chip	Nordic nRF family PPI (Programmable Peripheral Interconnect)1	nordic,nrf-ppi
MTD	on-chip	Flash node1	soc-nv-flash
	on-board	Fixed partitions of a flash (or other non-volatile storage) memory1	fixed-partitions
Networking	on-chip	Nordic nRF family RADIO peripheral1	nordic,nrf-radio
	on-chip	Nordic nRF family NFCT (Near Field Communication Tag)1	nordic,nrf-nfct
Pin control	on-chip	The nRF pin controller is a singleton node responsible for controlling pin function selection and pin properties1	nordic,nrf-pinctrl
Power management	on-chip	Nordic nRF power control node1	nordic,nrf-power
PWM	on-chip	nRF PWM3	nordic,nrf-pwm
	on-chip	nRFx S/W PWM1	nordic,nrf-sw-pwm
Regulator	on-chip	Nordic nRF5X regulator (fixed stage of the core supply)1	nordic,nrf5x-regulator
	on-board	Fixed voltage regulators2 3	regulator-fixed
Retained memory	on-chip	Nordic GPREGRET (General Purpose Register Retention) device2	nordic,nrf-gpregret
RNG	on-chip	Nordic nRF family RNG (Random Number Generator)1	nordic,nrf-rng
RTC	on-chip	Nordic nRF RTC (Real-Time Counter)3	nordic,nrf-rtc
Sensors	on-board	STMicroelectronics LPS22HB pressure sensor1	st,lps22hb-press
	on-board	STMicroelectronics HTS221 humidity and temperature sensor on I2C bus1	st,hts221
	on-board	CCS811 digital air quality sensor1	ams,ccs811
	on-board	STMicroelectronics LIS2DH12 3-axis accelerometer1	st,lis2dh12
	on-chip	Nordic nRF family TEMP node1	nordic,nrf-temp
	on-chip	Nordic nRF quadrature decoder (QDEC) node1	nordic,nrf-qdec
Serial controller	on-chip	Nordic nRF family UARTE (UART with EasyDMA)1	nordic,nrf-uarte
SPI	on-chip	Nordic nRF family SPI (SPI master)3	nordic,nrf-spi
SRAM	on-chip	Generic on-chip SRAM description1	mmio-sram
Timer	on-chip	ARMv7-M System Tick1	arm,armv7m-systick
Watchdog	on-chip	Nordic nRF family WDT (Watchdog Timer)1	nordic,nrf-wdt

Connections and IOs

Lightwell RGB LED

The LED is driven by the SX1509B GPIO expander chip (device name GPIO_P0).

GPIO Expander Pin	LED Channel
5	Green
6	Blue
7	Red

Button

Thingy:52 has a pushbutton, connected to the P0.11 SOC GPIO pin.

Serial

By default the system UART has the following pin configuration:

SOC Pin	Signal
P0.02	TX
P0.03	RX

The pins can be found on the P4 and P6 connectors. The system UART console uses these pins by default.

Internal I2C Bus

The internal I2C bus (I2C_0) is not routed to any of the external connectors, but most of the on-board devices are accessed through it. The following pins have been assigned to the bus:

SOC Pin	Signal
P0.07	SDA
P0.08	SCL

The following devices are attached to the bus.

Device	Address
SX1509B	0x3e
LPS22HB	0x5c
HTS221	0x5f
CCS811	0x5a

External I2C Bus

The external I2C bus (I2C_1) can be found on the P4 header and the P5 and P7 connectors.

SOC Pin	Signal
P0.14	SDA_EXT
P0.15	SCL_EXT

Pin Header

This is the pinout of the P4 pin header. Some of the SOC GPIO pins and I2C GPIO expander pins are accessible through it. It also allows attaching external devices to the four on-board N-channel MOSFET transistors.

Pin	Device	Signal / Device Pin
1	SOC	SCL_EXT / P0.15
2	SOC	SDA_EXT / P0.14
3	SOC	ANA/DIG0 / P0.02
4	SOC	ANA/DIG1 / P0.03
5	SOC	ANA/DIG2 / P0.04
6		GND
7	GPIO Expander	Pin 0
8	GPIO Expander	Pin 1
9	GPIO Expander	Pin 2
10	GPIO Expander	Pin 3
11	MOSFET 1	Drain
12	MOSFET 1	Source
13	MOSFET 2	Drain
14	MOSFET 2	Source
15	MOSFET 3	Drain
16	MOSFET 3	Source
17	MOSFET 4	Drain
18	MOSFET 4	Source
19		VDD
20		GND

MOSFETs

The MOSFETs are attached to the following SOC GPIO pins:

Device	Gate Pin
MOSFET 1	P0.18
MOSFET 2	P0.19
MOSFET 3	P0.20
MOSFET 4	P0.21

Power Rails

Thing:52 has multiple power rails. The necessary rails for the currently supported devices are listed here.

Name	Derived from	Controlled by
VREG	The battery	Always on
VDD_nRF	VREG	Always on
VDD	VREG	SOC pin P0.30
VDD_CCS	VDD	GPIO expander pin 10

Due to the dependencies of the power rails, multiple rails may need to be powered for a given device to turn on. The correct order of powering up the rails is the order of the rails down the dependency chain. For example, in order to power the CCS811 gas sensor, VDD has to be turned on first and VDD_CCS after it. Here’s a list of the devices and their power rails:

Device	Rail
nRF52832	VDD_nRF
SX1509B	VDD
LPS22HB	VDD
HTS221	VDD
CCS811	VDD_CCS

Sensors

Device	Function	Bus	I2C Address	Power Rail
LPS22HB	Pressure and Temperature sensor	I2C_0	0x5c	VDD
HTS221	Humidity and Temperature sensor	I2C_0	0x5f	VDD
CCS811	Gas sensor	I2C_0	0x5a	VDD_CCS

Misc. Device Pins

SX1509B

Device Signal	SOC Pin
SX_OSCIO	P0.05
SX_RESET	P0.16

LPS22HB

Sensor Signal	SOC Pin
LPS_INT	P0.23

HTS221

Sensor Signal	SOC Pin
HTS_INT	P0.24

CCS811

Sensor Signal	GPIO Expander Pin
CCS_RESET	11
CCS_WAKE	12

Programming and Debugging

Flashing

Flashing Zephyr onto Thingy:52 requires an external J-Link programmer. The programmer is attached to the P9 programming header.

Debugging

Thingy:52 does not have an on-board J-Link debug IC as some other nRF5 development boards, however, instructions from the Nordic nRF5x Segger J-Link page also apply to this board, with the additional step of connecting an external debugger. A development board with a Debug out connector such as the nRF52 DK can be used as a debugger with Thingy:52.

Testing board features

The green lightwell LED can be tested with the Blinky example.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b thingy52/nrf52832 samples/basic/blinky
west flash

Also the temperature and humidity sensor can be tested with the HTS221 Temperature and Humidity Monitor sample.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b thingy52/nrf52832 samples/sensor/hts221
west flash

References

[1]

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-Tools/Development-Kits/Nordic-Thingy-52

[2]

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ug_thingy52/page/UG/thingy52/intro/frontpage.html