nRF Connect SDK Fundamentals

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Lesson 1 – nRF Connect SDK Introduction
3 Topics | 1 Quiz
nRF Connect SDK structure and content
Exercise 1 – Installing nRF Connect SDK and VS Code
Exercise 2 – Build and flash your first nRF Connect SDK application
Lesson 1 Quiz
Lesson 2 – Reading buttons and controlling LEDs
6 Topics | 1 Quiz
Devicetree
Device driver model
GPIO Generic API
Dissecting the blinky sample
Exercise 1 – Controlling an LED through a button (polling based)
Exercise 2 – Controlling an LED through a button (interrupt based)
Lesson 2 Quiz
Lesson 3 – Elements of an nRF Connect SDK application
4 Topics | 1 Quiz
Configuration files
Devicetree overlays, CMake, and build systems
Exercise 1 – Creating an application
Exercise 2 – Customizing the application
Lesson 3 Quiz
Lesson 4 – Printing messages to console and logging
5 Topics | 1 Quiz
printk() function
Logger module
Exercise 1 – Printing to the console
Exercise 2 – Using the logger module
Exercise 3 – Exploring the logger module features
Lesson 4 Quiz
Lesson 5 – Serial communication (UART)
3 Topics | 1 Quiz
UART Protocol
UART Driver
Exercise 1 – Controlling LEDs through UART
Lesson 5 Quiz
Lesson 6 – Serial communication (I2C)
4 Topics | 1 Quiz
I2C Protocol
I2C Driver
Exercise 1 – Connecting an BME280 temperature sensor
Exercise 2 – Connecting to the BH1749 Ambient Light Sensor on the Thingy:91 and Thingy:53
Lesson 6 Quiz
Lesson 7 – Multithreaded applications
5 Topics | 1 Quiz
Bare-metal vs RTOS programming
Zephyr RTOS basics
Exercise 1 – Thread creation and priorities
Exercise 2 – Time slicing
Exercise 3 – Workqueue creation and work item submission
Lesson 7 Quiz
Lesson 8 – Thread synchronization
5 Topics | 1 Quiz
Thread synchronization
Semaphores
Mutexes
Exercise 1 – Semaphores
Exercise 2 – Mutexes
Lesson 8 Quiz
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Exercise 1 – Installing nRF Connect SDK and VS Code

Installing nRF Connect SDK and VS Code

Follow the steps below to install the nRF Connect SDK, its toolchain, and VS Code IDE

1. Install SEGGER J-Link v8.76

  • Windows
  • Linux
  • macOS
Windows

Download the installer from SEGGER J-Link Software. Run the installer; when you reach the ‘Choose Optional Components’ window during installation, be sure to select ‘Install Legacy USB Driver for J-Link’ This driver is necessary for some old Development Kits.

Linux

1.1 Install J-Link Driver

Download the installer from SEGGER J-Link Software. We select “64-bit DEB Installer” and download the file. It is enough to just run the file and install the package.

Please note that there is no additional GUI (besides the package manager). Alternatively, we can install from the console terminal by running sudo dpkg -i JLink_Linux_V876_x86_64.deb from the directory where the file was downloaded.

1.2 Install nrf-udev

The udev rules are required to access Nordic USB devices with correct permissions. Download the latest DEB file from nrf-udev and run the following command to install nrf-udev:

sudo dpkg -i nrf-udev_1.0.1-all.deb

macOS

Download the installer from SEGGER J-Link Software. Run the installer to install the SEGGER J-Link

2. Install VS Code.

Go to https://code.visualstudio.com/download and install the version that matches your operating system.

In the Activity Bar, click the Extensions icon, then type nRF Connect for VS Code Extension Pack in the search field, and click on Install, as shown in the illustration below:

3. Install nRF Connect Extension Pack.

nRF Connect for VS Code extension pack allows developers to use the popular Visual Studio Code Integrated Development Environment (VS Code IDE) to develop, build, debug, and deploy embedded applications based on Nordic’s nRF Connect SDK (Software Development Kit). It includes an interface to the compiler, linker, the whole build system, an RTOS-aware debugger, a seamless interface to the nRF Connect SDK, the Devicetree Visual Editor, and an integrated serial terminal, among other valuable development tools.

nRF Connect for VS Code extension pack consists of the following components:

  • nRF Connect for VS Code: The main extension contains an interface to the build system and nRF Connect SDK. It also provides an interface to manage nRF Connect SDK versions and toolchains.
  • nRF DeviceTree: Provides Devicetree language support and the Devicetree Visual Editor.
  • nRF Kconfig: Provides Kconfig language support.
  • nRF Terminal: A serial and RTT terminal.
  • C/C++ from Microsoft: Adds language support for C/C++, including features such as IntelliSense.
  • CMake: CMake language support.
  • GNU Linker Map Files: Linker map files support.

We can download any nRF Connect SDK version of our preference and its toolchain through the extension. Complete documentation of the nRF Connect for VS Code is available here.

Note

It’s crucial to install the nRF Connect for VS Code Extension Pack, as shown in the video above, not just nRF Connect for VS Code, in order to get all the available features.

4. Install nRF Connect SDK.

In nRF Connect for VS Code, click on Install SDK in the left margin under the WELCOME panel. Through the Manage SDKs menu, we can install, uninstall nRF Connect SDK versions. Since this is our first time using the extension, we will see only two options. Click on Install SDK.

There are two installation options for the SDK: “nRF Connect SDK” and “nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal.” Please select the first option, as this is the focus of the course.

Then, it will display the available versions of the nRF Connect SDK that can be downloaded and installed on your machine. Select the nRF Connect SDK version you want to use for your project development.

Starting with nRF Connect SDK v3.1.0, the SDK, its toolchain, and nrfutil are bundled together inside one package “Pre-packaged SDKs & Toolchains”, making it simple and straightforward to install the SDK.

Note

By default, nRF Connect for VS Code displays only released tags (also known as stable versions) of toolchains. If you are evaluating new features and want to use a preview tag or a different type of tag (for example, customer sampling -cs), click on “Show All Toolchain Versions.” as shown below:

Note that for production code, only released tags should be used.

Note

The nRF Connect for VS Code extension might prompt you to install a new supported version of SEGGER J-Link, if one is available.

In the illustration below, we are showing how to install nRF Connect SDK version 3.1.0. which is the latest released tag at the time of recording. Depending on your internet and machine speed, this will take some time to finish.

Important

We recommend installing the latest released tag of nRF Connect SDK listed to get all the latest features and patches.

With this, we have completed the installation of nRF Connect SDK and VS Code. The following exercise will teach us how to build and flash our first nRF Connect SDK application to our board.

It’s also worth noting that nRF Connect SDK is IDE agnostic, which means you can use it with the IDE of your choice or without an IDE. It is possible to download and install the nRF Connect using a command-line interface (CLI) through nRF Util (nrfutil). However, we highly recommend using VS Code with our nRF Connect for VS Code extension pack as it contains both a convenient graphical user interface (GUI) and an efficient command-line interface (CLI) in one place, in addition to many features that make firmware development much easier. Setting up another IDE to work with the nRF Connect SDK will require some extra manual steps that are out of the scope of this course.

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      Change summary

      What's new in the latest version

      General updates

      General updates

      •Support for nRF54LS05 DK (Available through the early access sampling program)
      •Support for the nRF54LM20B with Axon NPU for Edge AI applications
      Bluetooth LE updates

      Bluetooth LE updates

      •Quality of Service module is now production-ready.
      •New experimental features for RF testing (Direct Test Mode) and low-latency packet handling (LE Flushable ACL).
      MCUboot & Partition Manager

      MCUboot & Partition Manager

      •Single-Slot DFU and RAM Load mode are both promoted to fully supported
      •Partition Manager is officially deprecated in favor of Zephyr's devicetree-based partitioning.
      General updates

      General updates

      •Added comprehensive support for the nRF54L Series.
      •Bug fixes and improvements.
      •Hardware model v1, which was deprecated in nRF Connect SDK 2.7.0, has now been removed.
      •Multi-image builds functionality (parent-child images), which was deprecated in nRF Connect SDK v2.7.0 has now been removed.
      Bluetooth LE updates

      Bluetooth LE updates

      •Added support for Bluetooth Core version 6.2.
      •Added support for Bluetooth LE Shorter Connection Intervals.
      •Added support for Bluetooth LE Channel Sounding.
      Bootloader updates

      Bootloader updates

      •Support for MCUboot image compression.
      •Single slot DFU support for the nRF54L Series.
      •Encrypted DFU support using ECIES on the nRF54L15, nRF54LM20, and nRF54LV10 SoCs.