u-blox EVK-NINA-B3

Overview

The u-blox EVK-NINA-B30 Development Kit hardware provides support for the u-blox NINA-B30x Bluetooth 5.0 module, based on the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU and the following devices:

  • ADC

  • CLOCK

  • FLASH

  • GPIO

  • I2C

  • MPU

  • NVIC

  • PWM

  • RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy and 802.15.4)

  • RTC

  • Segger RTT (RTT Console)

  • SPI

  • UART

  • USB

  • WDT

EVK-NINA-B3

EVK-NINA-B3 (Credit: u-blox AG)

More information about the EVK-NINA-B3 and the NINA-B30x modules can be found at the u-blox website 1.

Hardware

The NINA-B30x on the EVK-NINA-B30x contains an internal high-frequency oscillator at 32MHz as well as a low frequency (slow) oscillator of 32.768kHz.

Supported Features

The ubx_evkninab3_nrf52840 board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

ADC

on-chip

adc

CLOCK

on-chip

clock_control

FLASH

on-chip

flash

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

I2C(M)

on-chip

i2c

MPU

on-chip

arch/arm

NVIC

on-chip

arch/arm

PWM

on-chip

pwm

RADIO

on-chip

Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.4

RTC

on-chip

system clock

RTT

Segger

console

SPI(M/S)

on-chip

spi

UART

on-chip

serial

USB

on-chip

usb

WDT

on-chip

watchdog

Other hardware features are not supported by the Zephyr kernel. See the u-blox website 1 for a complete list of EVK-NINA-B30x hardware features.

Connections and IOs

LED

  • LED0 (red) = P0.13

  • LED1 (green) = P0.25

  • LED2 (blue) = P1.00

Push buttons

  • BUTTON1 = SW1 = P0.25

  • BUTTON2 = SW2 = P0.2

  • BOOT = SW0 = boot/reset

External Connectors

Note

The pin numbers noted below are referenced to the pin 1 markings on the EVK-NINA-B30x for each header

Arduino Headers

Power (J1)

PIN #

Signal Name

NINA-B30x Functions

1

N/C

N/A

2

VDD_IO

N/A

3

RESET

P0.18 / RESET

4

3V3

N/A

5

5V0

N/A

6

GND

N/A

7

GND

N/A

8

VIN

N/A

Analog in (J2)

PIN #

Signal Name

NINA-B30x Functions

1

A0

P0.04 / AIN2

2

A1

P0.30 / AIN6

3

A2

P0.05 / AIN3

4

A3

P0.02 / AIN0

5

A4

P0.28 / AIN4

6

A5

P0.03 / AIN1

Digital I/O (J3)

PIN #

Signal Name

NINA-B30x Functions

8

D7

P0.10

7

D6

P0.09

6

D5

P0.11

5

D4

P0.13

4

D3

P0.31

3

D2

P1.12

2

D1 (TX)

P1.13

1

D0 (RX)

P0.29

Digital I/O (J4)

PIN #

Signal Name

NINA-B30x Functions

10

SCL

P0.24

9

SDA

P0.16

8

N/C

N/A

7

GND

N/A

6

D13 (SCK)

P0.07

5

D12 (MISO)

P1.00

4

D11 (MOSI)

P0.15

3

D10 (SS)

P0.14

2

D9

P0.12

1

D8

P1.09

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the ubx_evkninab3_nrf52840 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

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.

$ minicom -D <tty_device> -b 115200

Replace <tty_device> with the port where the EVK-NINA-B30x can be found. For example, under Linux, /dev/ttyACM0.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b ubx_evkninab3_nrf52840 samples/hello_world
west flash

Debugging

Refer to the Nordic nRF5x Segger J-Link page to learn about debugging u-blox boards with a Segger J-LINK-OB IC.

Testing the LEDs and buttons in the EVK-NINA-B30x

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/arm/ubx_evkninab3_nrf52840/ubx_ninab3_nrf52840.dts.

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:

    $ cat ubx_evkninab3_nrf52840.overlay
&uart1 {
  compatible = "nordic,nrf-uarte";
  current-speed = <115200>;
  status = "okay";
  tx-pin = <14>;
  rx-pin = <16>;
};

    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_get_binding("UART_1")

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

To select the pin numbers for tx-pin and rx-pin:

tx-pin = <pin_no>

Open the data sheet for the NINA-B3 at u-blox website 1, 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.

Translate ‘Pin’ into number for Device tree by using the following formula:

pin_no = b\*32 + a

where a and b are from the Pin value in the table (Pb.a). For example, for P0.1, pin_no = 1 and for P1.0, pin_no = 32.