u-blox EVK NINA-B40x

Overview

The u-blox NINA-B4 Evaluation Kit hardware is a Bluetooth low energy module based on the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52833 ARM Cortex-M4F CPU and has support for the following features:

ADC
CLOCK
FLASH
GPIO
I2C
MPU
NVIC
PWM
RADIO (Bluetooth Low Energy)
RTC
Segger RTT (RTT Console)
SPI
UART
USB
WDT

../../../../_images/EVK-NINA-B406_Top_web.jpg — EVK NINA-B4

More information about the NINA-B4 module and the EVK-NINA-B4 can be found at NINA-B40 product page [1] and EVK-NINA-B4 product page [2].

Supported Features

The ubx_evkninab4_nrf52833 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 low energy
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 EVK-NINA-B4 product page [2] and NINA-B40 Data Sheet [3] for a complete list of EVK NINA-B4 hardware features.

Connections and IOs

LED

LED0 (red) = P0.13
LED1 (green) = P1.01
LED2 (blue) = P1.00

Push buttons

BUTTON1 = SW1 = P1.01 (Shared with green LED)
BUTTON2 = SW2 = P0.02

General information on module pin numbering

The numbering of the pins on the module and EVK do not follow the GPIO numbering on the nRF52833 SoC. Please see the NINA-B40 Data Sheet [3] for information on how to map NINA-B40 pins to the pin numbering on the nRF52833 SoC.

The reason for this is the u-blox module family concept where different modules share the same pinout and can be interchanged, see NINA module family Nested design [4].

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the ubx_evkninab4_nrf52833 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

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.

Open a terminal program to the USB Serial Port installed when connecting the board and listen for output.

Settings: 115200, 8N1, no flow control.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b ubx_evknina4_nrf52833 samples/hello_world
west flash

Debugging

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

Testing the LEDs and buttons in the EVK NINA-B40x

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_evkninab4_nrf52833/ubx_evkninab4_nrf52833.dts.

Note that the buttons on the EVK-NINA-B4 are marked SW1 and SW2, which are named sw0 and sw1 in the dts file. Also note that the SW1 button and the green LED are connected on HW level.

Using UART1

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

Add device tree 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))

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

Pins can be configured in the board pinctrl file. To see the available mappings, open the data sheet for the NINA-B4 at NINA-B40 Data Sheet [3], 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.