Month: February 2022

Testing an NRF52833 Module

FrankLeave a comment

The (unofficial) Dublin Maker Badge for 2022 will hopefully be based on an NRF52833 module. I got hold of couple and asked a colleague to make a breakout PCB for it to allow me experiment.

The PCB is a little rough but is OK for evaluation purposes. I won’t be using the inner layer of contacts for the module as I can’t solder on to them manually however I should have enough pins in what remains. Luckily the extremely flexible NRF52833 allows for routing of signals to just about any pin. Next step is to the module to the board.

The drill holes for the pin headers have more or less wiped out all of the pads for the pin headers but with some careful soldering I think I got everything wired up. Next step Blinky!

VDD and VDDH are connected to a 3.3V DC supply; the SWD interface is connected to a JLink EDU probe. A simple Zephyr based LED Blinky program was downloaded and tested. The JLink software complained a little about the SWD interface being unstable and it automatically dropped its speed to a lower value. Blinky seemed to work fine; how about a simple BLE example I previously used on the BBC Microbit V2? Well that worked fine too without any changes 🙂

Next step: Interface with a display to see if the SPI interface can be operated at full speed.

Dublin maker badge 2022

FrankLeave a comment

It looks like Dublin Maker will actually happen this year :). I had planned a second badge for 2020 but that never happened. I initially thought that I might simply move that plan to this year however testing of the radio link proved to be inadequate for my needs (it used an NRF24L01 module). In the meantime I have been working with Zephyr OS and the BBC Microbit V2. The Microbit is based on an NRF52833 MCU which is capable of doing BLE Mesh networking. This looks quite attractive so I have begun moving my design to this platform. Basic Mesh networking seems to be ok and the graphics routines are working. I need to do a full hardware prototype next using some NRF52833 modules before a batch of badges is produced.

This is the first in a set of posts that will follow the development of the badge.