RoadTest: Taiyo Yuden Bluetooth® LE EVK
Author: salmanfarisvp
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Development Boards & Tools
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: nRF52DK, nRF52840 Dongle,ESP32, Ti SimpleLink SoC, Cypress PSoC 4 BLE Series SoC , Ublox BLE SoC
What were the biggest problems encountered?: SDK Support, The provided "NRF52811 Quick Start Guide" works good to me, but running other examples from the nRF52 SDK needs to do some modification in order to work.
Detailed Review:
Taiyo Yuden has a wide variety of Bluetooth low energy modules depends on the application size and power. In the road test, we are focusing on the nRF52811 based 3.25 x 8.55 x 0.85 (1.00) mm size EYSNSNNWW.
The EYSNSNNWW looks super tiny compare to any other Bluetooth module I ever saw and it's the "World’s Smallest Bluetooth Module with an Antenna" according to eepower.com. This one well suitable for application where the product size needs to be tiny, like wearables, drones, toys, Heart rate monitor, Blood glucose meter and indoor tracking devices..etc and also it comes with BLE 5 support and it's very power efficient and data throughput too compare to other generation of Bluetooth.
The EYSNSNNWW module powered by Nordic Semiconductor nRF52811 ARM Cortex M4 32bit processor with 192kB Flash and 24kB RAM and has a range of digital peripherals and interfaces such as PDM, PWM, UART, SPI and TWI. It also has a capable 12-bit ADC. Exceptionally low energy consumption is achieved using a sophisticated on-chip adaptive power management system. The module itself comes to pre-certified FCC, ISED qualified and Integrated high-performance PCB antenna, It is the 4th addition to the nRF52 Series platform, and it's capable of the latest and greatest features of Bluetooth 5.1, the most prominent being Direction Finding, taking Bluetooth positioning to new heights. (src: Nordic Semi)
In the Block Diagram, you can see that it comes with a single 32MHz X'tal but it can connect external 32.768kHZ, and it has 15 GPIO pins and Integrated high-performance PCB antenna
As part of the Taiyo Yuden Bluetooth® LE EVK - RoadTest , I received the EYSNSNNWW Evaluation Kit which contains the EBSNSNZWW Evaluation Board and SEGGER J-Link LITE which is a JTAG/SWD debug probe for Cortex-M cores.
Note that, the breadboard was not Included with evaluation kit, I soldered the headpins and stacked in a tiny breadboard I have. I always wanted a Segger J-Link and now it's here with the Evaluation Kit, Thanks to element14.
Here you can see the evaluation board comes with 15 GPIO, 1 UART, JTAG SWCLK, SWDIO and RESET Button, I designed pinout diagram for the DK.
Furthermore, it has a U.FL SMT Connector Pad, Current measurement Pad.
Here you can see the EYSNSNNWW Evaluation Kit schematic, the only additional control it has the FTDI chip and very fewer components footprint.
Here you can see that only Physical layer is managed by the Taiyo Yuden and the BLE stack is on the Nordic SoftDevice, The SoftDevice is a wireless protocol stack that complements an nRF5 Series System on Chip (SoC). Nordic Semiconductor provides them as qualified, precompiled binary files.
The SoftDevice enables the application programmer to develop their code as a standard ARM CortexTMM4F project without having the need to integrate with proprietary IC vendor software frameworks. This means that any ARM CortexTMM4F-compatible toolchain can be used to develop Bluetooth low energy applications with the SoftDevice.
TAIYO YUDEN's BLE modules are supported by four IDEs, Seggar Embedded Studio, Keil MDK, IAR Embedded Workbench and GCC and IAR but Interested in the application. since it is available free for nordic customers, so we can use that. let's start with a blink app.
3.1: For that open the Segger IDE and select File -> Open Solutions
3.1: From the following window go to the SDK Directory Examples -> Peripheral -> Blinky -> pca100403 -> blank -> ses and select blinky_pca10040e.emProject
4:1 Open main.c file, since the code designed for the nRF Development kit, it will not work with our module so comment all the code there and insert these line one
#include "nrf_delay.h"
#include "nrf_gpio.h"
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#define led 12
int main(void) {
nrf_gpio_cfg_output(led); // set led pin as OUTPUT
while (1) { // infinite loop
nrf_gpio_pin_set(led); //Turn on
nrf_delay_ms(1000); //wait a sec
nrf_gpio_pin_clear(led); //Turn off
nrf_delay_ms(1000); //wait a sec
}
}
4.1 To compile the code select Build -> Compile
4.2 Connect LED to the pin number P12.
4.3: Attach the J-Link to board and computer, also connect the evaluation USB to a power.
4.4: Flash the code to the Evaluation Board, For that select Build -> Build and Run
4.5 Done
You can see the flash completed successfully.
also, you can debug the device with J-Link
You can see the memory usage
That's all now, we successfully set up and flashed the TAIYO YUDEN EYSNSNZWW Evaluation Board.
TAIYO YUDEN EYSNSNZWW comes with BLE 5 support and it's very power efficient and data throughput to compare to other generation of Bluetooth, Let's try it out.
I complied and flashed the nRF SDK BLE Blinky Example with some GPIO Modification. and used nRF Connect for Desktop and nRF52840 Dongle to communicate with the device you can also use mobile phone too
Also tested the range, I got around 20 meters in the apartment.
The main highlight the size and the support from the nordic dev community and available docs also a plus, and another one is segger IDE, which is Stright forward and no hassles and very fewer components footprint plus, Since there is no separate Devkit for the nRF52811, so it can be used as nRF52811 DK.
nRF52 DK example project will not work out of the box and it needs to modify little more in order to work and another one is there is no inbuilt user-led and button. That's all.
I used nRF52 DK and Dongle and I feel this also very comfortable to use and build applications, and sometimes we need to edit the SDK Demo and it will not run out of the box, we need to do some modifications, and I'm impressed with the module size. my suggestion is better to add single GPIO connected led and user button will be great
Thank You Taiyo Yuden and element14 road test program for the opportunity to evaluate this great kit.
Top Comments
I'm finishing off my road test so have a short video on a link loss test I did. I agree with the range based on this link-loss test.
But then I found there was no difference between this module (i.e…
Are you going to test the RF part of the board?
What kind of range does it support, data rates, encryption?
DAB
I used the nordic nRF Connect android app to measure the RSSI.