Recently, I was selected for the review of Nordic's Thingy:53 development platform. I received the parcel last week and it is really cool device.
Here in this small first impression blog I will post some pictures and explain what the dev. kit contains. I will post the main roadtest blog letter when I am done with the test.
The Thingy:53 comes with mainly two PCBs. One is main development board(Thingy53) with nRF5340 SoC, nRF21540 FEM for range extension of Bluetooth and other 2.4Ghz wireless protocols,
various sensors, Battery and other useful features for development of prototypes based on Nordic devices.
The second board is for debugging and current measurement board used for measuring the current and debugging any application code.
So this image contains the both the PCBs.
Thingy:53 comes with a plastic casing which protects the PCB from corrosion and other damages. So when we develop on Thingy:53, it looks always new. On the side there is a slot for connections like power over USB,
debug port connection, external JTAG and switch to turn the Thingy:53 on/off.
On the other side there are hooks to open the casing. Open the hooks and lift the casing cover upwards and you will have the board inside as show in the below two pictures.
One can see the nRF5340 Soc, A NFC antenna and sensors on the board.
The board can be repacked inside the casing again easily and makes it really easy for future use.
The Thingy:53 is ideal for machine learning projects. The is inbuilt edge-impulse firmware and application which can be used to update the firmware over the air, via bluetooth. The board comes with many features,
but one downside which at present comes to my mind is that it has not that much I/O pins available for uses to connect external hardware etc.
The following are the things that interest me for this roadtest.
- The board has nRF21540 FEM which is used as range extender for wireless protocols, I want to test this functionality
- Installation and configuration of nRF connect SDK
- BLE and Bluetooth support
- Edge impulse app and firmware update over the air
- Working with sensors on board
- Programming the Thingy:53 seems only possible with JTAG/Deburg cable and Bluetooth but not via Usb
Let's do the roadtest....!!
