In the previous post I described three quick steps (well… sometimes mbed is pretty slow) to get started with NRF51-DK on Ubuntu 14.04.

Yesterday I was able to get the NRF51-DK to talk to my phone, which was pretty exciting.

In short

For NRF51-DK:

• Open mbed compiler
• Import > Click on “programs” tab instead of “libraries”
• Search for “BLE_LoopbackUART” > Import
  Note: Do NOT check “update libraries”, unlike what this Evothings post suggests, checking “update libraries” actually threw errors and failed to compile in the next step, whereas if I went back and re-imported checking “update libraries”, it compiled fine
• Compile and save file
• Copy to JLINK to upload.
  Note: Make the NRF51-DK is turned ON and connected to laptop

On Android:

• Using Google Play, install NRF Toolbox from Nordic
• Open and click on UART
• Click Connect (say “yes” to turning on bluetooth if you haven’t already)
• Click the “…” > Show log
• Write “hello” > SEND
• Click “↵” on your android phone or scroll to the bottom of the log
• You should see it say “hey” sent and “hey received” 🙂

In Long (with screenshots)

• Open mbed compiler
• Import > Click on “programs” tab instead of “libraries”
• Search for “BLE_LoopbackUART” > Import
  Note: Do NOT check “update libraries”, unlike what this Evothings post suggests, checking “update libraries” actually threw errors and failed to compile in the next step, whereas if I went back and re-imported checking “update libraries”, it compiled fine
  
  
• Compile and save file
• Copy to JLINK to upload.
  Note: Make the NRF51-DK is turned ON and connected to laptop

On Android:

• Using Google Play, install NRF Toolbox from Nordic
  
• Open and click on UART
  
  
• Click Connect (say “yes” to turning on bluetooth if you haven’t already) and select the “BLE UART” device near you
  
• Click the “…” > Show log
  
  
• Write “hello” > SEND
• Click “↵” on your android phone or scroll to the bottom of the log
• You should see it say “hey” sent and “hey received” 🙂

  

Tada! That’s it.

Next, servos and robots! Then, many hours of porting code from Arduino to ARM.