circuitpython/ports/nrf/boards/feather_nrf52840_express

Setup

The feather52840 board is currently based on the PCA10056 development board from Nordic Semiconductors, since commercial modules are not yet available for the nRF52840.

The difference between the pca10056 and feather52840 board support packages is that no bootloader is present on the pca10056 (a HW debugger like a Segger J-Link is required to flash firmware images), whereas the feather52840 package uses a serial bootloader, with a slightly different flash layout to account for the bootloader's presence.

Both targets run on the same hardware and assume the same pinouts.

The feather52840 board support package will be updated at a later date to reflect any pin changes in the final Feather form-factor HW.

Installing CircuitPython submodules

Before you can build, you will need to run the following commands once, which will install the submodules that are part of the CircuitPython ecosystem, and build the mpy-cross tool:

$ cd circuitpython
$ git submodule update --init
$ make -C mpy-cross

You then need to download the SD and Nordic SDK files via:

This script relies on wget, which must be available from the command line.

$ cd ports/nrf
$ ./bluetooth/download_ble_stack.sh

Installing the Serial Bootloader

The Adafruit nRF52840 Feather uses a serial bootloader that allows you to update the core CircuitPython firmware and internal file system contents using only a serial connection.

On empty devices, the serial bootloader will need to be flashed once using a HW debugger such as a Segger J-Link before the serial updater (adafruit-nrfutil) can be used.

Install nrfjprog

Before you can install the bootloader, you will first need to install the nrfjprog tool from Nordic Semiconductors for your operating system. The binary files can be downloaded via the following links:

• nRF5x toolset tar for Linux 32-bit v9.7.2
• nRF5x toolset tar for Linux 64-bit v9.7.2
• nRF5x toolset tar for OSX v9.7.2
• nRF5x toolset installer for Windows v9.7.2

You will then need to add the nrfjprog folder to your system PATH variable so that it is available from the command line. The exact process for this is OS specific, but on a POSIX type system like OS X or Linux, you can temporarily add the location to your PATH environment variables as follows:

$ export PATH=$PATH:YOURPATHHERE/nRF5x-Command-Line-Tools_9_7_2_OSX/nrfjprog/

You can test this by running the following command:

$ nrfjprog --version
nrfjprog version: 9.7.2
JLinkARM.dll version: 6.20f

Flash the USB CDC Bootloader with 'nrfjprog'

This operation only needs to be done once, and only on boards that don't already have the serial bootloader installed.

Firstly clone the Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader and enter its directory

$ git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader.git
$ cd Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader

Once nrfjprog is installed and available in PATH you can flash your board with the serial bootloader via the following command:

make BOARD=feather_nrf52840_express VERSION=latest flash

This should give you the following (or very similar) output, and you will see a DFU blinky pattern on one of the board LEDs:

$ make BOARD=pca10056 VERSION=latest flash
Flashing: bin/pca10056/6.0.0r0/pca10056_bootloader_s140_6.0.0r0.hex
nrfjprog  --program bin/pca10056/6.0.0r0/pca10056_bootloader_s140_6.0.0r0.hex --chiperase -f nrf52 --reset
Parsing hex file.
Erasing user available code and UICR flash areas.
Applying system reset.
Checking that the area to write is not protected.
Programing device.
Applying system reset.
Run.

From this point onward, you can now use a simple serial port for firmware updates.

Note: You can specify other version that are available in the directory Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader/bin/feather_nrf52840_express/ . The VERSION=latest will use the latest bootloader available.

IMPORTANT: Disable Mass Storage on PCA10056 J-Link

The J-Link firmware on the PCA10056 implement USB Mass Storage, but this causes a known conflict with reliable USB CDC serial port communication. In order to use the serial bootloader, you must disable MSD support on the Segger J-Link!

To disable mass storage support, run the JLinkExe (or equivalent) command, and send MSDDisable. (You can re-enable MSD support via MSDEnable):

$ JLinkExe
SEGGER J-Link Commander V6.20f (Compiled Oct 13 2017 17:20:01)
DLL version V6.20f, compiled Oct 13 2017 17:19:52

Connecting to J-Link via USB...O.K.
Firmware: J-Link OB-SAM3U128-V2-NordicSemi compiled Jul 24 2017 17:30:12
Hardware version: V1.00
S/N: 683947110
VTref = 3.300V


Type "connect" to establish a target connection, '?' for help
J-Link>MSDDisable
Probe configured successfully.
J-Link>exit

Building and Flashing CircuitPython

Installing adafruit-nrfutil

run follow command to install adafruit-nrfutil from PyPi

$ pip3 install adafruit-nrfutil --user

Flashing CircuitPython with USB CDC

With the serial bootloader present on your board, you first need to force your board into DFU mode by holding down BUTTON1 and RESETTING the board (with BUTTON1 still pressed as you come out of reset).

This will give you a fast blinky DFU pattern to indicate you are in DFU mode.

You can build and flash a CircuitPython binary via the following command:

$ make V=1 SD=s140 SERIAL=/dev/tty.usbmodem1411 BOARD=feather52840 all dfu-gen dfu-flash

This should give you the following results:

$make V=1 BOARD=feather52840 SD=s140 SERIAL=/dev/tty.usbmodem1411 dfu-gen dfu-flash
nrfutil dfu genpkg --sd-req 0xFFFE --dev-type 0x0052 --application build-feather52840-s140/firmware.hex build-feather52840-s140/dfu-package.zip
Zip created at build-feather52840-s140/dfu-package.zip
nrfutil --verbose dfu serial --package build-feather52840-s140/dfu-package.zip -p /dev/ttyACM1 -b 115200 --singlebank
Upgrading target on /dev/ttyACM1 with DFU package /home/hathach/Dropbox/adafruit/circuitpython/ada_cp/ports/nrf/build-feather52840-s140/dfu-package.zip. Flow control is disabled, Single bank mode
Starting DFU upgrade of type 4, SoftDevice size: 0, bootloader size: 0, application size: 199840
Sending DFU start packet
Sending DFU init packet
Sending firmware file
#########################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################
Activating new firmware

DFU upgrade took 8.50606513023s
Device programmed.

Flashing CircuitPython with MSC UF2

uf2 file is generated last by all target

$ make V=1 SD=s140 SERIAL=/dev/tty.usbmodem1411 BOARD=feather52840 all
Create firmware.uf2
../../tools/uf2/utils/uf2conv.py -f 0xADA52840 -c -o "build-feather52840-s140/firmware.uf2" "build-feather52840-s140/firmware.hex"
Converting to uf2, output size: 392192, start address: 0x26000
Wrote 392192 bytes to build-feather52840-s140/firmware.uf2.

Simply drag and drop firmware.uf2 to the MSC, the nrf52840 will blink fast and reset after done.