nRF9160 DK

Overview

The nRF9160 DK (PCA10090) is a single-board development kit for evaluation and development on the nRF9160 SiP for LTE-M and NB-IoT. The nrf9160dk_nrf9160 board configuration provides support for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF9160 ARM Cortex-M33F CPU with ARMv8-M Security Extension and the following devices:

ADC
CLOCK
FLASH
GPIO
I2C
MPU
NVIC
PWM
RTC
Segger RTT (RTT Console)
SPI
UARTE
WDT
IDAU

More information about the board can be found at the nRF9160 DK website [2]. The Nordic Semiconductor Infocenter [3] contains the processor’s information and the datasheet.

Hardware

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_nrf9160 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
RTC	on-chip	system clock
RTT	Segger	console
SPI(M/S)	on-chip	spi
SPU	on-chip	system protection
UARTE	on-chip	serial
WDT	on-chip	watchdog

Additional hardware in v0.14.0+

Starting from v0.14.0, additional hardware is available on the DK:

External flash memory (MX25R6435F, 64 Mb)
I/O expander (PCAL6408A) that can be used to interface LEDs, slide switches, and buttons

To use this additional hardware, specify the revision of the board that should be used when building your application (for more information, see Building for a board revision). For example, to build for nRF9160 DK v1.0.0:

Using west:

west build -b [email protected]

Using CMake and ninja:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -GNinja [email protected] ..
ninja

Remember to also enable routing for this additional hardware in the firmware for nRF9160 DK - nRF52840 (see Board controller firmware).

Other hardware features have not been enabled yet for this board. See nRF9160 DK website [2] and Nordic Semiconductor Infocenter [3] for a complete list of nRF9160 DK board hardware features.

Connections and IOs

LED

LED1 (green) = P0.2
LED2 (green) = P0.3
LED3 (green) = P0.4
LED4 (green) = P0.5

Push buttons and Switches

BUTTON1 = P0.6
BUTTON2 = P0.7
SWITCH1 = P0.8
SWITCH2 = P0.9
BOOT = SW5 = boot/reset

Security components

Implementation Defined Attribution Unit (IDAU [1]). The IDAU is implemented with the System Protection Unit and is used to define secure and non-secure memory maps. By default, all of the memory space (Flash, SRAM, and peripheral address space) is defined to be secure accessible only.
Secure boot.

Programming and Debugging

nrf9160dk_nrf9160 supports the Armv8m Security Extension, and by default boots in the Secure state.

Building Secure/Non-Secure Zephyr applications with Arm® TrustZone®

Applications on the nRF9160 may contain a Secure and a Non-Secure firmware image. The Secure image can be built using either Zephyr or Trusted Firmware M [4] (TF-M). Non-Secure firmware images are always built using Zephyr. The two alternatives are described below.

Note

By default the Secure image for nRF9160 is built using TF-M.

Building the Secure firmware using Zephyr

The process requires the following steps:

Build the Secure Zephyr application using -DBOARD=nrf9160dk_nrf9160 and CONFIG_TRUSTED_EXECUTION_SECURE=y in the application project configuration file.
Build the Non-Secure Zephyr application using -DBOARD=nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns.
Merge the two binaries together.

Building the Secure firmware with TF-M

The process to build the Secure firmware image using TF-M and the Non-Secure firmware image using Zephyr requires the following action:

Build the Non-Secure Zephyr application using -DBOARD=nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns. To invoke the building of TF-M the Zephyr build system requires the Kconfig option BUILD_WITH_TFM to be enabled, which is done by default when building Zephyr as a Non-Secure application. The Zephyr build system will perform the following steps automatically:
- Build the Non-Secure firmware image as a regular Zephyr application
- Build a TF-M (secure) firmware image
- Merge the output binaries together
- Optionally build a bootloader image (MCUboot)

Note

Depending on the TF-M configuration, an application DTS overlay may be required, to adjust the Non-Secure image Flash and SRAM starting address and sizes.

When building a Secure/Non-Secure application, the Secure application will have to set the IDAU (SPU) configuration to allow Non-Secure access to all CPU resources utilized by the Non-Secure application firmware. SPU configuration shall take place before jumping to the Non-Secure application.

Building a Secure only application

Build the Zephyr app in the usual way (see Building an Application and Run an Application), using -DBOARD=nrf9160dk_nrf9160.

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 nRF9160 DK 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 nrf9160dk_nrf9160 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.

Testing the LEDs and buttons in the nRF9160 DK

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/nrf9160dk_nrf9160/nrf9160dk_nrf9160_common.dtsi.