nRF9160 DK - nRF52840

Overview

The nRF52840 SoC on the nRF9160 DK (PCA10090) hardware provides support for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU and the following devices:

  • CLOCK

  • FLASH

  • GPIO

  • MPU

  • NVIC

  • PWM

  • RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy and 802.15.4)

  • RTC

  • Segger RTT (RTT Console)

  • UART

  • WDT

The nRF52840 SoC does not have any connection to the any of the LEDs, buttons, switches, and Arduino pin headers on the nRF9160 DK board. It is, however, possible to route some of the pins of the nRF52840 SoC to the nRF9160 SiP.

More information about the board can be found at the Nordic Low power cellular IoT 1 website. The Nordic Semiconductor Infocenter 2 contains the processor’s information and the datasheet.

Hardware

The nRF9160 DK 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 nrf9160dk_nrf52840 board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

CLOCK

on-chip

clock_control

FLASH

on-chip

flash

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

MPU

on-chip

arch/arm

NVIC

on-chip

arch/arm

PWM

on-chip

pwm

RADIO

on-chip

Bluetooth, ieee802154

RTC

on-chip

system clock

RTT

Segger

console

UART

on-chip

serial

WDT

on-chip

watchdog

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the nrf9160dk_nrf52840 board configuration can be built and flashed in the usual way (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Make sure that the PROG/DEBUG switch on the DK is set to nRF52.

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).

Remember to set the PROG/DEBUG switch on the DK to nRF52.

See the following 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 port where the nRF52840 SoC is connected to. Usually, under Linux it will be /dev/ttyACM1. The /dev/ttyACM0 port is connected to the nRF9160 SiP on the board.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nrf9160dk_nrf52840 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.

Remember to set the PROG/DEBUG switch on the DK to nRF52.

Board controller firmware

The board controller firmware is a small snippet of code that takes care of routing specific pins of the nRF9160 SiP to different components on the DK, such as LEDs and buttons, UART interfaces (VCOMx) of the interface MCU, and specific nRF52840 SoC pins.

Note

In nRF9160 DK revisions earlier than v0.14.0, nRF9160 signals routed to other components on the DK are not simultaneously available on the DK connectors.

When compiling a project for nrf9160dk_nrf52840, the board controller firmware will be compiled and run automatically after the Kernel has been initialized.

By default, the board controller firmware will route the following:

nRF9160 pins

Routed to

P0.26, P0.27, P0.28, and P0.29

VCOM0

P0.01, P0.00, P0.15, and P0.14

VCOM2

P0.02

LED1

P0.03

LED2

P0.04

LED3

P0.05

LED4

P0.08

Switch 1

P0.09

Switch 2

P0.06

Button 1

P0.07

Button 2

P0.17, P0.18, and P0.19

Arduino pin headers

P0.21, P0.22, and P0.23

Trace interface

COEX0, COEX1, and COEX2

COEX interface

For a complete list of all the routing options available, see the nRF9160 DK board control section in the nRF9160 DK User Guide 3.

If you want to route some of the above pins differently or enable any of the other available routing options, enable or disable the devicetree node that represents the analog switch that provides the given routing.

The following devicetree nodes are defined for the analog switches present on the nRF9160 DK:

Devicetree node label

Analog switch name

vcom0_pins_routing

nRF91_UART1 (nRF91_APP1)

vcom2_pins_routing

nRF91_UART2 (nRF91_APP2)

led1_pin_routing

nRF91_LED1

led2_pin_routing

nRF91_LED2

led3_pin_routing

nRF91_LED3

led4_pin_routing

nRF91_LED4

switch1_pin_routing

nRF91_SWITCH1

switch2_pin_routing

nRF91_SWITCH2

button1_pin_routing

nRF91_BUTTON1

button2_pin_routing

nRF91_BUTTON2

nrf_interface_pins_0_2_routing

nRF_IF0-2_CTRL (nRF91_GPIO)

nrf_interface_pins_3_5_routing

nRF_IF3-5_CTRL (nRF91_TRACE)

nrf_interface_pins_6_8_routing

nRF_IF6-8_CTRL (nRF91_COEX)

When building for the DK revision 0.14.0 or later, you can use the following additional nodes (see Building for a board revision for information how to build for specific revisions of the board):

Devicetree node label

Analog switch name

nrf_interface_pin_9_routing

nRF_IF9_CTRL

io_expander_pins_routing

IO_EXP_EN

external_flash_pins_routing

EXT_MEM_CTRL

For example, if you want to enable the optional routing for the nRF9160 pins P0.17, P0.18, and P0.19 so that they are routed to nRF52840 pins P0.17, P0.20, and P0.15, respectively, add the following in the devicetree overlay in your application:

&nrf_interface_pins_0_2_routing {
        status = "okay";
};

And if you want to, for example, disable routing for the VCOM2 pins, add the following:

&vcom2_pins_routing {
        status = "disabled";
};

A few helper .dtsi files are provided in the directories boards/arm/nrf9160dk_nrf52840/dts and boards/arm/nrf9160dk_nrf9160/dts. They can serve as examples of how to configure and use the above routings. You can also include them from respective devicetree overlay files in your applications to conveniently configure the signal routing between nRF9160 and nRF52840 on the nRF9160 DK. For example, to use uart1 on both these chips for communication between them, add the following line in the overlays for applications on both sides:

#include <nrf9160dk_uart1_on_if0_3.dtsi>