Laird Connectivity BL654 USB (451-00004)

Overview

The BL654 USB adapter hardware (Laird Connectivity part 451-00004) provides support for the Laird Connectivity BL654 module powered by a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU.

This USB adapter has the following features:

CLOCK
FLASH
GPIO
MPU
NVIC
PWM
RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy and 802.15.4)
USB
WDT
RTC

451-00004 Box Contents — Fig. 78 BL654 USB Adapter PCB

More information about the BL654 USB adapter can be found on the BL654 USB Dongle Quick Start Guide 1. There is more information on the BL654 range on the BL654 website 2.

Hardware

Supported Features

The BL654 USB 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
USB	on-chip	usb
WDT	on-chip	watchdog

Other hardware features are not supported by the Zephyr kernel. See BL654 website 2 for a complete list of BL654 USB adapter hardware features.

Connections and IOs

LED

LED1 (blue) = P0.13

Push buttons

RESET = SW1 = nReset

Serial Port

Zephyr console output is available as follows:

using the USB connector, which may be used to make the console available on PC as USB CDC class.

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the bl654_usb board configuration can be built in the usual way (see Building an Application for more details). The bl654_usb board cannot be used for debugging. The compatible BL654_DVK board can be used for development. Documentation can be found at the BL654_DVK Zephyr site 4 and boards/arm/bl654_dvk/doc/bl654_dvk.rst

Flashing

The board supports programming using the built-in bootloader.

The board is factory-programmed with a Laird Connectivity variation of Nordic’s open bootloader from Nordic’s nRF5x SDK. With this option, you’ll use Nordic’s nrfutil 3 program to create firmware packages supported by this bootloader and flash them to the device. Make sure nrfutil is installed before proceeding. These instructions were tested with version 6.1.0.

With the adapter plugged in, reset the board into the bootloader by pressing the RESET button.

The push button is in a pin-hole on the logo side of the USB adapter.

The blue LED should start a fade pattern, signalling the bootloader is running.

Compile a Zephyr application; we’ll use blinky.

west build -b bl654_usb zephyr/samples/basic/blinky

Package the application for the bootloader using nrfutil:

nrfutil pkg generate --hw-version 52 --sd-req=0x00 \
        --application build/zephyr/zephyr.hex \
        --application-version 1 blinky.zip

Flash it onto the board. Note /dev/ttyACM0 is for Linux; it will be something like COMx on Windows, and something else on macOS.
```
nrfutil dfu usb-serial -pkg blinky.zip -p /dev/ttyACM0
```
When this command exits, observe the blue LED on the board blinking.

Testing Bluetooth on the BL654 USB

Many of the Bluetooth examples will work on the BL654 USB. Try them out:

Testing the LED on the BL654 USB

There is a sample that allows you to test that the LED on the board is working properly with Zephyr:

Blinky

You can build and flash the example to make sure Zephyr is running correctly on your board. The LED definitions can be found in boards/arm/bl654_usb/bl654_usb.dts.

References

1: https://www.lairdconnect.com/documentation/user-guide-bl654-usb-nordic-sdk-zephyr
2(1,2): https://connectivity.lairdtech.com/wireless-modules/bluetooth-modules/bluetooth-5-modules/bl654-series
3: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-nrfutil
4: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/arm/bl654_dvk/doc/bl654_dvk.html