nRF9160 Thing Plus
Overview
The nRF9160 Thing Plus designed by Circuit Dojo is a single-board development for bringing your LTE-M and NB-IoT applications to life. The sparkfun_thing_plus_nrf9160 board configuration leverages the pre-existing support for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF9160. Supported nRF9160 peripherals include:
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 nRF9160 Thing Plus Documentation [1].
Hardware
Supported Features
The sparkfun_thing_plus 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.
sparkfun_thing_plus/nrf9160 target
Type |
Location |
Description |
Compatible |
|---|---|---|---|
CPU |
on-chip |
ARM Cortex-M33F CPU1 |
|
ADC |
on-chip |
Nordic Semiconductor nRF family SAADC node1 |
|
ARM architecture |
on-chip |
Nordic EGU (Event Generator Unit)6 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic KMU (Key Management Unit)1 |
||
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family CTRL-AP (Control Access Port)1 |
||
on-chip |
Nordic SPU (System Protection Unit)1 |
||
on-chip |
Nordic UICR (User Information Configuration Registers)1 |
||
Audio |
on-chip |
Nordic PDM (Pulse Density Modulation interface)1 |
|
Clock control |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF clock control node1 |
|
Counter |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF timer node3 |
|
Cryptographic accelerator |
on-chip |
ARM TrustZone CryptoCell 3101 |
|
Flash controller |
on-chip |
Nordic NVMC (Non-Volatile Memory Controller)1 |
|
GPIO & Headers |
on-chip |
NRF5 GPIO1 |
|
on-chip |
|||
on-board |
GPIO pins exposed on Adafruit Feather headers1 |
||
I2C |
on-chip |
||
I2S |
on-chip |
Nordic I2S (Inter-IC sound interface)1 |
|
IIO |
on-board |
Voltage Divider1 |
|
Input |
on-board |
Group of GPIO-bound input keys1 |
|
Interrupt controller |
on-chip |
ARMv8-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1 |
|
IPC |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family IPC (Interprocessor Communication)1 |
|
LED |
on-board |
Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1 |
|
on-board |
Group of PWM-controlled LEDs1 |
||
Miscellaneous |
on-chip |
Nordic DPPIC (Distributed Programmable Peripheral Interconnect Controller)1 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic FICR (Factory Information Configuration Registers)1 |
||
MMU / MPU |
on-chip |
ARMv8-M MPU (Memory Protection Unit)1 |
|
MTD |
on-board |
Properties supporting Zephyr spi-nor flash driver (over the Zephyr SPI API) control of serial flash memories using the standard M25P80-based command set1 |
|
on-chip |
Flash node1 |
||
Pin control |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family Pin Controller1 |
|
Power management |
on-chip |
Nordic VMC (Volatile Memory Controller)1 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic nRF power control node1 |
||
PWM |
on-chip |
||
on-chip |
nRFx S/W PWM1 |
||
Regulator |
on-chip |
Nordic REGULATORS (voltage regulators control module) on nRF91X1 |
|
on-board |
Fixed voltage regulators1 |
||
Retained memory |
on-chip |
Nordic GPREGRET (General Purpose Register Retention) device2 |
|
RTC |
on-board |
NXP PCF85063A RTC1 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic nRF RTC (Real-Time Counter)2 |
||
Sensors |
on-board |
STMicroelectronics LIS2DH 3-axis accelerometer accessed through I2C bus1 |
|
Serial controller |
on-chip |
||
SPI |
on-chip |
||
SRAM |
on-chip |
Generic on-chip SRAM1 |
|
Timer |
on-chip |
ARMv8-M System Tick1 |
|
Watchdog |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family WDT (Watchdog Timer)1 |
sparkfun_thing_plus/nrf9160/ns target
Type |
Location |
Description |
Compatible |
|---|---|---|---|
CPU |
on-chip |
ARM Cortex-M33F CPU1 |
|
ADC |
on-chip |
Nordic Semiconductor nRF family SAADC node1 |
|
ARM architecture |
on-chip |
Nordic EGU (Event Generator Unit)6 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic KMU (Key Management Unit)1 |
||
Audio |
on-chip |
Nordic PDM (Pulse Density Modulation interface)1 |
|
Clock control |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF clock control node1 |
|
Counter |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF timer node3 |
|
Flash controller |
on-chip |
Nordic NVMC (Non-Volatile Memory Controller)1 |
|
GPIO & Headers |
on-chip |
NRF5 GPIO1 |
|
on-chip |
NRF5 GPIOTE1 |
||
on-board |
GPIO pins exposed on Adafruit Feather headers1 |
||
I2C |
on-chip |
||
I2S |
on-chip |
Nordic I2S (Inter-IC sound interface)1 |
|
IIO |
on-board |
Voltage Divider1 |
|
Input |
on-board |
Group of GPIO-bound input keys1 |
|
Interrupt controller |
on-chip |
ARMv8-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1 |
|
IPC |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family IPC (Interprocessor Communication)1 |
|
LED |
on-board |
Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1 |
|
on-board |
Group of PWM-controlled LEDs1 |
||
Miscellaneous |
on-chip |
Nordic DPPIC (Distributed Programmable Peripheral Interconnect Controller)1 |
|
MMU / MPU |
on-chip |
ARMv8-M MPU (Memory Protection Unit)1 |
|
MTD |
on-board |
Properties supporting Zephyr spi-nor flash driver (over the Zephyr SPI API) control of serial flash memories using the standard M25P80-based command set1 |
|
on-chip |
Flash node1 |
||
Pin control |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family Pin Controller1 |
|
Power management |
on-chip |
Nordic VMC (Volatile Memory Controller)1 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic nRF power control node1 |
||
PWM |
on-chip |
||
on-chip |
nRFx S/W PWM1 |
||
Regulator |
on-chip |
Nordic REGULATORS (voltage regulators control module) on nRF91X1 |
|
on-board |
Fixed voltage regulators1 |
||
Retained memory |
on-chip |
Nordic GPREGRET (General Purpose Register Retention) device2 |
|
RTC |
on-board |
NXP PCF85063A RTC1 |
|
on-chip |
Nordic nRF RTC (Real-Time Counter)2 |
||
Sensors |
on-board |
STMicroelectronics LIS2DH 3-axis accelerometer accessed through I2C bus1 |
|
Serial controller |
on-chip |
||
SPI |
on-chip |
||
SRAM |
on-chip |
Generic on-chip SRAM1 |
|
Timer |
on-chip |
ARMv8-M System Tick1 |
|
Watchdog |
on-chip |
Nordic nRF family WDT (Watchdog Timer)1 |
Connections and IOs
The nRF9160 Thing Plus has everything you know and love about the Feather platform. Here are some of the highlights:
LED
D7 (blue) = P0.03
USB
Contains a USB/UART connection for both debugging and loading new code using a UART Enabled MCUBoot.
Standard Battery Connection
The nRF9160 Thing Plus has a 2 pin battery connector on board. Lithium Polymer batteries > 300mA required.
Nano SIM Holder
The nRF9160 Thing Plus has a built-in nano SIM (4FF) holder located on the bottom side.
Programming and Debugging
The sparkfun_thing_plus board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.
| flash | debug | rtt | reset | debugserver | attach | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| jlink | ✅ | ✅ (default) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| nrfjprog | ✅ | |||||
| nrfutil | ✅ (default) |
sparkfun_thing_plus_nrf9160 can be used with most programmers like:
J-Link (the nRF53-DK is recommended)
CMSIS-DAP based programmers
Check out Getting Started [2] for more info.
Building an application
In most cases you’ll want to use the ns target with any of the Zephyr
or Nordic based examples.
Some of the examples do not use secure mode, so they do not required the ns suffix.
A great example of this is the Hello World below.
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.
$ screen /dev/<tty_device> 115200
Replace <tty_device> with the port where the nRF9160 Thing Plus
can be found. In most cases (On Linux/Mac) it will be: /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART.
Then build and flash the application in the usual way.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b sparkfun_thing_plus_nrf9160 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.
References
Side note This page was based on the documentation for the nRF9160 DK. Thanks to Nordic for developing a great platform!