RoadTest: Panasonic PAN 1780 Bluetooth LE Eval Kit
Author: miguelsoares14
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?: nRF52840, nRF52832, DT100111 (and DT100112) from Microchip
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Jumpers configuration depending of the user meant aplication is a litle bit confusing. Examples projects are designed and available in a more "developer" way, not so easy for a "usual user" get into, understand it and use it.
Detailed Review:
In terms of construction the board presents a really good quality, and is easy to plug to a normal breadboard, which facilitates the development of small test projects.
The jumpers correct assembly is a little bit tricky, the fact that I need to set jumpers to configure UART is a non-sense for me. The UART configuration should be done by software, or by high level hardware (IC switches) for example.
In terms of documentation, I would give a 5 in 10, because you have a nice intro, however when the user wants to get into it, you have to dig into Nordic websites, etc etc. I'm more usual to Microchip mcu's and they have a nice framework that would suggest to you: "Code Configurator". This framework is good for new devs, that are more interested into get things done, and its nice to implement with the user code, considering that it works like "plugable blocks". For example, for BLE usage, it would be nice to have a quick use library well documented for a more friendly implementation.
Unfortunately due to personal constrains I had no possibility to invest more time on it. However I did some small tests in conjunction with the mobile apps "nRF Toolbox" and "nRF Connect" making use of the BLE Uart in way to construct a simple code to send a message from my mobile "nRF Connect" app to the base board, parse the message and with it turn High a gpio.
I hope in a close future make some more test, more focused on Home iot.
Thank you very much for this opportunity!!
