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Nordic nRF9160 Development Kit

rscasny

Table of contents

About the Nordic nRF9160 DK Kit

Nordic Semi LogoThe nRF9160 DK is a pre-certified, single-board development kit for evaluation and development on the nRF9160 SiP for LTE-M, NB-IoT and GNSS. It also includes an nRF52840 board controller that, for example, can be used to build a Bluetooth Low Energy gateway.

It has a dedicated LTE-M and NB-IoT antenna that supports a wide range of bands to operate globally. LTE bands B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B8, B12, B13, B14, B17, B18, B19, B20, B25, B26, B28 and B66 have been certified. See the Nordicsemi.com/9160cert for more details.

A dedicated patch antenna for GNSS, and a 2.4 GHz antenna for Bluetooth LE are included on the board. SWF RF connectors are available for the LTE-M/NB-IoT and 2.4 GHz antennas. A connector is also available to attach an external GNSS antenna.

 All GPIOs and interfaces (SPI/TWI/UART) are available via connectors. It is Arduino Uno Rev3 compatible, meaning it can be easily interfaced with external device shields.

 User-programmable LEDs (4), buttons (2), and switches (2) are available to easily give input and get output. The nRF9160 DK has both a 4FF SIM card slot and an MFF2 SIM footprint, to support both plug-in and soldered (e)SIMs. It is bundled with an eSIM card from iBasis preloaded with 10 MB.

 Programming and debugging are enabled through the Segger J-Link OB, which also supports external targets. The nRF9160 DK is supported by a full suite of development software and tools, which are all free to download and use commercially.

 nRF Connect SDK includes everything needed to get started: application layer protocols, examples, peripheral drivers, and more. The kit can easily be connected to our cloud solution, nRF Cloud. The nRF Link Monitor tool located in nRF Connect for Desktop provides an AT command interface that enables you to test your link, and extract information about the network.

 The nRF9160 SiP and nRF9160 Development Kit are now in production and are suitable for full end-to-end sensor-to-cloud development.

Summary of Key Features

  • Global LTE-M/NB-IoT antenna
  • GNSS antenna
  • Arduino Uno form factor
  • Supports Bluetooth LE
  • 4 LEDs user-programmable
  • 2 buttons user-programmable
  • 2 switches user-programmable
  • SEGGER J-Link OB Debugger with debug out support
  • UART interface through VCOM port
  • USB connection for debug/programming and power
  • Bundled with an eSIM card from iBasis preloaded with 10 MB

Video

SIM Card and Connecting to Nordic's nRF Cloud

The roadtester will receive an iBasis SIM card. Click here to see its coverage areas.

You will received free 10MB of data.

You will need to register on Nordic's nRF Cloud and activate the SIM card. Click here to go to the instructions.

Additional Information

Important Dates

Enrollment Begins May 8, 2022
Enrollment Closes June 21 2022
RoadTesters Selected June 23 2022
Products Shipped TBD
Roadtesting Begins TBD
element14 Team Follow Up TBD
Publish Reviews by TBD

Terms and Conditions

Click Here to read the Terms and Conditions.

Reviews for this Roadtest
Comment List
Anonymous
  • in reply to Ujjval Rathod

    No. Since website upgrade, announcement is done by editing description and linking RoadTesters profiles at the end of description. In this case there are still no RoadTesters announced yet. Most probably they are busy with organising contents at this time because lot of competitions were announced, they were busy with shipping prizes and also one competion concluded at this time if I rememeber correctly.

  • Were the road testers announced?

  • in reply to misaz

    I think what you have mentioned is the difference between modules and SoC. In SoC the radio controller and host mcu are on the single chip while the modules are like there is separate MCU sending AT commands to the module. This may be UART interface. 

    I know some of the BLE SoC from Nordic has these interface option where BLE HCI interface example are provided either via UART or it may be something else.

    Don't know how it was in the AVNET Monarch DK..

  • For this Nordic nRF9160 DK evaluation, my idea is to design and Implement a simple Remote Weather Station. The plan would be to utilize the LTE-M/NB-IoT modem on the NRF9160 to communicate to the Cloud. The cloud could be the mentioned nRF Cloud or I would like to send the weather Telemetry data to Azure IoT central. But we shall see.

    I have used LTE-M technology for a review for the AVNET Monarch LTE-M dev kit. The Roadtest page URL is: AVNET Monarch LTE-M Development Kit -- EU.  With this evaluation kit, there were 3 hardware layers and one LTE service provider. I did have troubles with the LTE service, Verizon Thingspace , but I was able to get the Azure IoT central cloud connection to eventually work.

    It would be exciting to review the Nordic nRF9160 DK Kit.

    Steve K

  • Use cases of this board looks very similar to AVNET Monarch LTE-M Development kit roadtested one year ago. But topology is different. In AVNET kit you programmed external  MCU and LTE connectivity was achieved using UART communication with external module (AVNET Monarch Go). In case of nRF9610 DK you can program MCU core directly on the same chip.

  • I have looked in the schematics and this board looks very interesting. While its main purpose is evaluating nRF9160, there is also nRF52840 BLE capable chip. Very interesting is that board allows utilizing both chips by user application and there are many (If I count correctly there are 16) analog switches allowing to choose (software defined) to which chip you want to connect many peripherals like LEDs, buttons, UART and maybe some GPIOs. So, you can choose it by software and even change your choice in runtime. It would be nice to play with this board and test what it can do. Slightly limiting may be limited support for LTE-M and NB-IoT networks in some countries but it looks that it can work even on older networks with omitting the most hi-tech features of these modern networks.