nRF51-VBLUno51

Overview

Zephyr uses the nrf51_vbluno51 board configuration to run on the VBLUno51 board, a VNG Bluetooth Low Energy UNO using an nRF51822 ARM processor.

nRF51_VBLUno51 Bottom

nrf51_vbluno51 Bottom

More information about the board can be found at the VBLUno51 wiki page [1].

Hardware

VBLUno51 board has two external oscillators. The frequency of the slow clock is 32.768 kHz. The frequency of the main clock is 16 MHz.

  • CPU:
    • Nordic nRF51822: ARM® Cortex® M0 32bit.

    • Bluetooth Low Energy interface.

    • 256KB Flash, 32KB RAM.

    • UART(1), I2C(2), SPI(1), PWM(3), SWD, Timer 16bit(3).

    • 21 digital channels, 6 ADC 10bit channels.

    • 1 Led and 1 Button onboard.

    • GPIO Voltage: 0 - 3.3V.

  • DAPLink (CMSIS-DAP) interface for program and debug:
    • USB MSD: Drag and Drop programming flash memory.

    • USB HID (DAP): CMSIS-DAP compliant debug channel.

    • USB CDC: Virtual COM port for log, trace and terminal emulation.

  • Supports hardware flow control features (RTS/CTS).

  • Energy monitoring for BLE module by current measurement (Only VBLUno51_EM)

  • FOTA (Firmware over the air): Upgrade firmware over BLE interface.

  • Build good applications with:
    • Compiler and IDE: GCC, Keil MDK, IAR, Eclipse, Qt Creator.

    • Frameworks: Arduino, ARM mbed-OS, Zephyr-OS, Nordic SDK, RIOT-OS, MyNewt-OS, ChibiOS, NuttX RTOS

    • A lot of tutorials for Arduino, mbed-os and more.

  • Pinout: Arduino Uno Rev3 compliant.

  • Power:
    • USB port.

    • Power adapter: +9 -> +12V.

    • 3V Battery: CR20xx holder

    • Rechargeable battery jump: +3.7 -> +12V

  • Open source: Hardware design, firmware, packages, tutorial and example codes

See VBLUno51 wiki page [1] for full documents and tutorials about the VBLUno51 board.

Supported Features

The nrf51_vbluno51 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.

nrf51_vbluno51/nrf51822 target

Type

Location

Description

Compatible

CPU

on-chip

ARM Cortex-M0 CPU1

arm,cortex-m0

ADC

on-chip

nRF ADC node1

nordic,nrf-adc

ARM architecture

on-chip

Nordic UICR (User Information Configuration Registers)1

nordic,nrf-uicr

on-chip

Nordic nRF family MPU (Memory Protection Unit)1

nordic,nrf-mpu

on-chip

Nordic nRF family SWI (Software Interrupt)6

nordic,nrf-swi

Clock control

on-chip

Nordic nRF clock control node1

nordic,nrf-clock

on-chip

Nordic nRF high-frequency crystal oscillator (nRF51 series)1

nordic,nrf51-hfxo

Comparator

on-chip

Nordic nRF LPCOMP (analog Low-Power COMParator)1

nordic,nrf-lpcomp

Counter

on-chip

Nordic nRF timer node3

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

Flash controller

on-chip

Nordic NVMC (Non-Volatile Memory Controller)1

nordic,nrf51-flash-controller

GPIO & Headers

on-chip

NRF5 GPIOTE1

nordic,nrf-gpiote

on-chip

NRF5 GPIO1

nordic,nrf-gpio

I2C

on-chip

Nordic nRF family TWI (TWI master)11

nordic,nrf-twi

Input

on-board

Group of GPIO-bound input keys1

gpio-keys

Interrupt controller

on-chip

ARMv6-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller) controller1

arm,v6m-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

Networking

on-chip

Nordic nRF family RADIO peripheral1

nordic,nrf-radio

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

nRFx S/W PWM1

nordic,nrf-sw-pwm

Retained memory

on-chip

Nordic GPREGRET (General Purpose Register Retention) device1

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)2

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

SPI

on-chip

Nordic nRF family SPI (SPI master)2

nordic,nrf-spi

SRAM

on-chip

Generic on-chip SRAM1

mmio-sram

Watchdog

on-chip

Nordic nRF family WDT (Watchdog Timer)1

nordic,nrf-wdt

Connections and IOs

LED

  • LED = LED0 (green) = P0.7

Push buttons

  • BUTTON = BUT = SW0 = P0.15

More details

nRF51_VBLUno51 Pinout

nrf51_vbluno51 Pinout

nRF51_VBLUno51 Fritzing part

nrf51_vbluno51 Fritzing part

Programming and Debugging

The nrf51_vbluno51 board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

flash debug debugserver attach rtt
pyocd ✅ (default) ✅ (default)

Applications for the nrf51_vbluno51 board configuration can be built and flashed in the usual way (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Flashing

The VBLUno51 board has on-board DAPLink (CMSIS-DAP) interface for flashing and debugging. You do not need any other programming device. You only need to install pyOCD tool (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyOCD)

This tutorial uses the blinky application Blinky.

See the Getting Started Guide for general information on setting up your development environment. Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nrf51_vbluno51 samples/basic/blinky
west flash

Debugging

You can debug an application in the usual way. Here is an example for the Blinky application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nrf51_vbluno51 samples/basic/blinky
west debug

Testing the VBLUno51 with Zephyr: buttons, LEDs, UART, BLE

Here are some sample applications that you can use to test different components on the VBLUno51 board:

References