Labs Blip

Overview

The Electronut Labs Blip hardware provides support for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU and the following devices:

  • ADC

  • CLOCK

  • FLASH

  • GPIO

  • I2C

  • MPU

  • NVIC

  • PWM

  • RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy and 802.15.4)

  • RTC

  • Segger RTT (RTT Console)

  • SPI

  • UART

  • USB

  • WDT

More information about the board is available at https://github.com/electronut/ElectronutLabs-blip.

Hardware

Blip 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 nrf52840_blip 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.

nrf52840_blip/nrf52840 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 EGU (Event Generator Unit)6

nordic,nrf-egu

on-chip

Nordic nRF family ACL (Access Control List)1

nordic,nrf-acl

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

on-chip

ARM TrustZone CryptoCell 3101

arm,cryptocell-310

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

on-chip

Properties defining the interface for the Nordic QSPI peripheral1

nordic,nrf-qspi

GPIO & Headers

on-chip

NRF5 GPIOTE1

nordic,nrf-gpiote

on-chip

NRF5 GPIO2

nordic,nrf-gpio

I2C

on-chip

Nordic nRF family TWI (TWI master)1 1

nordic,nrf-twi

I2S

on-chip

Nordic I2S (Inter-IC sound interface)1

nordic,nrf-i2s

IEEE 802.15.4

on-chip

Nordic nRF IEEE 802.15.4 node1

nordic,nrf-ieee802154

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-chip

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 PWM4

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-chip

Nordic nRF52X regulator (high voltage stage of the main supply)1

nordic,nrf52x-regulator-hv

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-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 UART1

nordic,nrf-uart

on-chip

Nordic nRF family UARTE (UART with EasyDMA)1

nordic,nrf-uarte

SPI

on-chip

Nordic nRF family SPI (SPI master)2 1

nordic,nrf-spi

on-chip

Nordic nRF family SPIM (SPI master with EasyDMA)1

nordic,nrf-spim

SRAM

on-chip

Generic on-chip SRAM description1

mmio-sram

Timer

on-chip

ARMv7-M System Tick1

arm,armv7m-systick

USB

on-chip

Nordic nRF52 USB device controller1

nordic,nrf-usbd

Watchdog

on-chip

Nordic nRF family WDT (Watchdog Timer)1

nordic,nrf-wdt

Connections and IOs

LED

  • LED1 (green) = P0.13

  • LED2 (red) = P0.14

  • LED3 (blue) = P0.15

Push buttons

  • BUTTON1 = SW1 = P1.07

  • Reset = SW5 = P0.18 (can be used as GPIO also)

UART

BMP does not support hardware flow control, so only RX/TX pins are connected.

  • TX = P0.6

  • RX = P0.8

I2C

I2C pins connected to onboard sensors:

  • SDA = P0.12

  • SCL = P0.11

SPI

  • SCK = P0.25

  • MOSI = P1.02

  • MISO = P0.24

MicroSD is connected to these pins, and CS pin is connected to P0.17.

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the nrf52840_blip board configuration can be built and flashed in the usual way (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details); The onboard Black Magic Probe debugger presents itself as two USB-serial ports. On Linux, they may come up as /dev/ttyACM0 and /dev/ttyACM1. The first one of these (/dev/ttyACM0 here) is the debugger port. GDB can directly connect to this port without requiring a GDB server by specifying target external /dev/ttyACM0. The second port acts as a serial port, connected to the SoC.

Flashing

Applications are flashed and run 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 serial port of Black Magic Probe. For example, under Linux, /dev/ttyACM1.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nrf52840_blip samples/hello_world
west flash

Debugging

Debug and attach configurations are available using Black Magic Probe, and ninja debug, or ninja attach (or with make) are available.

NOTE: You may need to press the reset button once after using ninja flash to start executing the code. (not required with debug or attach)

Testing the LEDs and buttons in the nRF52840 PDK

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/electronut/nrf52840_blip/nrf52840_blip.dts.

References