Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 5
Hardware Platforms
Most commercial use cases for BLE-enabled products involve
peripherals
, rather than
the
central
devices (phones, tablets, or personal computers) you would design products
to interact with. As such, this chapter introduces some specific development platforms
for designing and prototyping BLE peripherals.
The discussion in this chapter assumes a basic familiarity with embedded system design
(
Chapter 10
), and the primary goal is to point product designers to inexpensive and
readily available platforms that might be appropriate for their products.
nRF51822-EK (Nordic Semiconductors)
Nordic Semiconductors has been involved in low-power wireless solutions for years
and, as a board member on the Bluetooth SIG, has helped define and shape the core
BLE standard since its inception. Widely known in the wireless market for its popular,
general-purpose radio-frequency (RF) silicon solutions, it was one of the first companies
to get affordable BLE peripheral-mode silicon to market (the nRF8001). Its newest
nRF51 family represents a complete redesign from many of their previous single-chip
RF products, combining a radio with a modern 32-bit ARM microprocessor in a single
chip.
Technical Specifications
Nordic's nRF51 series is a highly integrated system-on-chip, combining a BLE-
compatible radio and a modern ARM processor in a single low-cost package with the
following characteristics:
• ARM Cortex-M0 core running at 16 MHz
• 128 or 256 KB flash memory (between 80 and 90 KB is required for the S110 BLE
stack)
