Laird Connectivity BL653 DVK

Overview

The BL653 Development Kit (453-00039-K1, 453-00041-K1) hardware provides support for the Laird Connectivity BL653 module powered by a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52833 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU.

This development kit has the following features:

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

More information about the board can be found at the BL653 website [1].

Hardware

Supported Features

The BL653 DVK 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, ieee802154
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 have not been enabled yet for this board. See BL653 website [1] for a complete list of BL653 Development Kit board hardware features.

Connections and IOs

LED

LED1 (blue) = P0.13
LED2 (blue) = P0.14
LED3 (blue) = P0.15
LED4 (blue) = P0.16

Push buttons

BUTTON1 = SW1 = P0.11
BUTTON2 = SW2 = P0.12
BUTTON3 = SW9 = P0.24
BUTTON4 = SW10 = P0.25
RESET = SW3 = nReset/IF BOOT

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the bl653_dvk board configuration can be built, flashed, and debugged in the usual way. See Building an Application and Run an Application for more details on building and running.

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.

NOTE: On the BL653 development board, the FTDI USB should be used to access the UART console.

$ minicom -D <tty_device> -b 115200

Replace <tty_device> with the port where the BL653 development kit can be found. For example, under Linux, /dev/ttyUSB0.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b bl653_dvk samples/hello_world
west flash

Debugging

Refer to the Nordic nRF5x Segger J-Link page to learn about debugging Nordic based boards with a Segger IC.

Testing Bluetooth on the BL653 DVK

Many of the Bluetooth examples will work on the BL653 DVK. Try them out:

Testing the LEDs and buttons on the BL653 DVK

There are 2 samples that allow you to test that the buttons (switches) and LEDs on the board are working properly with Zephyr:

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/bl653_dvk/bl653_dvk.dts.

Using UART1

The following approach can be used when an application needs to use more than one UART for connecting peripheral devices:

Add devicetree overlay file to the main directory of your application:

&pinctrl {
   uart1_default: uart1_default {
      group1 {
         psels = <NRF_PSEL(UART_TX, 0, 14)>,
                 <NRF_PSEL(UART_RX, 0, 16)>;
      };
   };
   /* required if CONFIG_PM_DEVICE=y */
   uart1_sleep: uart1_sleep {
      group1 {
         psels = <NRF_PSEL(UART_TX, 0, 14)>,
                 <NRF_PSEL(UART_RX, 0, 16)>;
         low-power-enable;
      };
   };
};

&uart1 {
  compatible = "nordic,nrf-uarte";
  current-speed = <115200>;
  status = "okay";
  pinctrl-0 = <&uart1_default>;
  pinctrl-1 = <&uart1_sleep>;
  pinctrl-names = "default", "sleep";
};

In the overlay file above, pin P0.16 is used for RX and P0.14 is used for TX

Use the UART1 as DEVICE_DT_GET(DT_NODELABEL(uart1))

See Set devicetree overlays for further details.

Selecting the pins

Pins can be configured in the board pinctrl file. To see the available mappings, open the nRF52833 Product Specification [2], chapter 7 ‘Hardware and Layout’. In the table 7.1.1 ‘aQFN73 ball assignments’ select the pins marked ‘General purpose I/O’. Note that pins marked as ‘low frequency I/O only’ can only be used in under-10KHz applications. They are not suitable for 115200 speed of UART.