Reprogram an onboard Nordic Semiconductor. Nordic’s nRF51822 Bluetooth SoC

[vdiallonort]

Hello,

I am not an electronic engineer but i still have basic skill ( did my bachelor in Telecommunication ) and I would like to know how hard it will be to reprogram an  Nordic Semiconductor. Nordic’s nRF51822 Bluetooth SoC that is inside my Basis Peak watch.
I like to connect to other remote sensor and create my own feature. I am guessing it will be by far different than when I reprogram my onboard Arduino. But does there is interface I can use the same way than with my Atmega chip ?

Vincent

[jnz]

The chips are easy to reprogram, as iirc, nothing locks the Jtag out. Although I have no idea if your board makes this easy.

But what you are saying is you want to add your own feature, but you'll need to entirely start over with the firmware. You'll need to get the Nordic SDK and a development enviroment, chart out their hardware, make the headers for that board, and start programming.

You'd be doing almost all the work to create a marketable Nordic powered BLE device. The interface is the absolute last concern IMO.

[vdiallonort]

Thanks,not sure how far i want to go, for now it's only studying and the pure love of learning.I am "just" ( can be a lot of work ) looking to get the raw information from the sensor and send them by Bluetooth to my computer.But since I will not be able to de-compile the existing firmware,I will have to find out how all the sensors works,protocol and how they are wired.

Vincent

[Galaxyrise]

Did you ever give this a go? Now that that peak is being recalled and support discontinued, a hack like this would be be the only way to continue using it.

[electrostorm]

I've been able to re-program my nrf51822 based fitness tracker using the Arduino IDE. Being Arm based, the nrf51822 works with most Arm compatible Arduino libraries.

Using a $3 St-link V2 from ebay.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1PCS-ST-Link-V2-Programming-Unit-mini-STM8-STM32-Emulator-Downloader-AU-NEW-/302095788532?hash=item46564fe9f4:g:ePAAAOSwbPxXQCcc

I disconnected  the battery from the tracker connected the board's GND and Battery terminals to St-link V2 GND and 3.3V pins. Also pins 23 and 24 which were exposed as pads on my board and easy to connect to SWDIO and SWDCLK pins on St-link V2
https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/question/1010/programming-pins-of-the-nrf51822-chip/

Install sandeepmistry's Arduino board manager and flash SoftDevice firmware to the nrf51822 with the Arduino IDE . This wipes any previous firmware and installs BluetoothLE functions.
https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-nRF5

Next I have to get the OLED display working,,