Mini board for developing and debugging software on BLE, Zigbee Thread

Greetings to Habr readers! In this article I want to share my new development with the community, we will talk about a small Development Board on the nRF52840 chip. The board was designed for inexpensive E73-2G4M08S1C modules. The idea of ​​its creation was born in one cozy telegram chat quite spontaneously. There was a need for an inexpensive and easy-to-assemble device.





The nRF52840 Dongle scheme was taken as a basis, compatibility with pca10059 made it quite easy to start development in SDK, there was no need to reassign interfaces or peripherals. All electronic components that need to be soldered are> = 0805, so the board can be soldered quite simply.





The device can be powered by USB, CR2032 battery, or 3.3v. To switch the power supply, you must rearrange the jumper U4 to the desired position - 5V or 3V3. For power supply and programming via USB, the board has slots for 2 types of USB connectors, MICRO USB 2.0 TYPE B and USB 2.0 Type A.



There is also an additional BAT jumper for the battery compartment on the board, which allows you to completely disconnect the battery from the device.



The device has two connectors, on one side a 14P connector, and on the other side a 10P connector, and pads for the remaining pins are also made on the bottom side of the device.



With the help of this board, it is convenient to assemble prototypes of future devices and test software. This module came in handy for me to prototype devices for Mysensors networks. It is also very easy to "convert" this board into an Arduino NANO 33 BLE. Arduino has a nice Arduino BLE library based on Mbed OS.



→ Github of the Mini Development Board project



For this board, an additional module was also made by one of the members of our community - RGBW dimmer. The additional module is made in the same dimensions as the main board.







Initially, the additional board and the dimmer project as a whole was developed by VKE (Maxim) for the Zigbee network, but ran into insurmountable obstacles inside the ZigBee Open Source Stack, hello to the guys from the dsr-corporation .





As far as I know, this dimmer project has now been rebuilt for the Thread protocol and everything is just fine there.



→ Github of the expansion module project (dimmer)

→ Github of the dimmer project on Zigbee

→  Github of the dimmer project on Thread



Also, just the other day, the BME 280 temperature, humidity and pressure sensor project on Thread became available, the results on the stability of the Thread network and power consumption are impressive.





→ Github of the BME280 sensor project on Thread











On this I will probably end! I invite all those interested in DIY hardware and software development for nRF5 (and not only) on BLE, Zigbee, Thread, Mysensors protocols to our cozy telegram chats:



Telegram @ DIY Devices

Telegram @ MySensors



All good!