EVK NINA-B40x

u-blox EVK NINA-B40x

Overview

The u-blox NINA-B4 Evaluation Kit hardware is a Bluetooth low energy module based on the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52833 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU and has support for the following features:

  • ADC

  • CLOCK

  • FLASH

  • GPIO

  • I2C

  • MPU

  • NVIC

  • PWM

  • RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy)

  • RTC

  • Segger RTT (RTT Console)

  • SPI

  • UART

  • USB

  • WDT

../../../../_images/EVK-NINA-B406_Top_web1.jpg

EVK NINA-B4

More information about the NINA-B4 module and the EVK-NINA-B4 can be found at NINA-B40 product page [1] and EVK-NINA-B4 product page [2].

Supported Features

The ubx_evkninab4 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.
ubx_evkninab4/nrf52833 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

on-board

ADC channels exposed on Arduino Uno (R3) headers1

arduino,uno-adc

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

on-chip

Nordic nRF high-frequency crystal oscillator (nRF52 series)1

nordic,nrf52-hfxo

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-chip

NRF5 GPIOTE1

nordic,nrf-gpiote

on-chip

NRF5 GPIO2

nordic,nrf-gpio

on-board

GPIO pins exposed on Arduino Uno (R3) headers1

arduino-header-r3

I2C

on-chip

Nordic nRF family TWI (TWI master)1

nordic,nrf-twi

on-chip

Nordic nRF family TWIM (TWI master with EasyDMA)1

nordic,nrf-twim

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

on-board

Group of PWM-controlled LEDs1

pwm-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

Nordic nRF family Pin Controller1

nordic,nrf-pinctrl

Power management

on-chip

Nordic nRF power control node1

nordic,nrf-power

PWM

on-chip

nRF PWM13

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)11

nordic,nrf-spi

on-chip

Nordic nRF family SPIM (SPI master with EasyDMA)11

nordic,nrf-spim

SRAM

on-chip

Generic on-chip SRAM1

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
  • LED0 (red) = P0.13

  • LED1 (green) = P1.01

  • LED2 (blue) = P1.00

Push buttons
  • BUTTON1 = SW1 = P1.01 (Shared with green LED)

  • BUTTON2 = SW2 = P0.02

General information on module pin numbering

The numbering of the pins on the module and EVK do not follow the GPIO numbering on the nRF52833 SoC. Please see the NINA-B40 Data Sheet [3] for information on how to map NINA-B40 pins to the pin numbering on the nRF52833 SoC.

The reason for this is the u-blox module family concept where different modules share the same pinout and can be interchanged, see NINA module family Nested design [4].

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the ubx_evkninab4/nrf52833 board configuration can be built and flashed in the usual way (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details); however, the standard debugging targets are not currently available.

Flashing

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.

Open a terminal program to the USB Serial Port installed when connecting the board and listen for output.

Settings: 115200, 8N1, no flow control.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b ubx_evkninab4/nrf52833 samples/hello_world
west flash

Debugging

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

Testing the LEDs and buttons in the EVK NINA-B40x

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

samples/basic/blinky
samples/basic/button

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/u-blox/ubx_evkninab4/ubx_evkninab4_nrf52833.dts.

Note that the buttons on the EVK-NINA-B4 are marked SW1 and SW2, which are named sw0 and sw1 in the dts file. Also note that the SW1 button and the green LED are connected on HW level.

Using UART1

The following approach can be used when an application needs to use more than one UART for connecting peripheral devices:

  1. Add device tree overlay file to the main directory of your application:

    &pinctrl {
       uart1_default: uart1_default {
          group1 {
             psels = <NRF_PSEL(UART_TX, 0, 14)>,
                     <NRF_PSEL(UART_RX, 0, 16)>;
          };
       };
       /* required if CONFIG_PM_DEVICE=y */
       uart1_sleep: uart1_sleep {
          group1 {
             psels = <NRF_PSEL(UART_TX, 0, 14)>,
                     <NRF_PSEL(UART_RX, 0, 16)>;
             low-power-enable;
          };
       };
    };
    
    &uart1 {
      compatible = "nordic,nrf-uarte";
      current-speed = <115200>;
      status = "okay";
      pinctrl-0 = <&uart1_default>;
      pinctrl-1 = <&uart1_sleep>;
      pinctrl-names = "default", "sleep";
    };
    

    In the overlay file above, pin P0.16 is used for RX and P0.14 is used for TX

  2. Use the UART1 as DEVICE_DT_GET(DT_NODELABEL(uart1))

Overlay file naming

The file has to be named <board>.overlay and placed in the app main directory to be picked up automatically by the device tree compiler.

Selecting the pins

Pins can be configured in the board pinctrl file. To see the available mappings, open the data sheet for the NINA-B4 at NINA-B40 Data Sheet [3], Section 3 ‘Pin definition’. In the table 7 select the pins marked ‘GPIO_xx’. Note that pins marked as ‘Radio sensitive pin’ can only be used in under-10KHz applications. They are not suitable for 115200 speed of UART.

References