BLE Gateway Shield

Introduction

Bluetooth 4.0 BLE Gateway Shield is an addon that can turn pcDuino8 Uno into a Bluetooth 4.0 BLE gateway. It is using Nordic nRF51422 chipset and Arduino compatible. User have the flexibility to what serial ports (soft serial port or hard serial port on pcDuino) can be used to talk to the gateway by installing jumpers. User can also reflash the firmware of the nRF51422 chipset using the on-board debug headers. For example, user can choose to flash the chipset with MBED BLE and S110 protocol.

Features

• NRF51822 Bluetooth Low Energy & 2.4GHz Wireless SOC
• MBED program compatible
• Debug headers
• Arduino and pcDuino compatible serial port communication
• Soft serial-port and Hard serial port available.

Firmware flash

All BLE gateway shield comes with a gateway firmware pre-installed.

If we need to reinstall the firmware to the bluetooth shield. Please follow the following steps:

To flash the firmware the bluetooth chipset, we use Jlink to burn the firmware.

1）Preparation Tool

• Jlink JTAG x 1
• Jumper wires x 4
• BLE Gateway Shield x 1

2)Firmware burning

Jlink pins definition:

Connecting Jlink JTAG’s VCC, GND, SWIO, SWCLK to corresponding pins of BLE Gateway Shield (some jlink JTAG DOESN’T have power output, we need provide power separately) .

Open J-Flash software->Option->Project settings->CPU->Device->Nordic Semi nRF51422_xxAA

Project settings->Target Interface->SWD

File->Open data file->nRF51822_SimpleChat_NRF51_DK.hex

The resulting configuration is complete. After configuration completed, press F5 to download , waiting for the download to complete . As shown below:

Gateway Testing

（1）Preparation Tool

Arduino UNO x 1

BLE Gateway Shield x 1

iphone/Android phone x 1

（2）program

The BLE Gateway Shield connected to the Arduino UNO, Connecting BLE Gateway Shield to Arduino then burn the program.

byte inbuff[100];
byte outbuff[100];
// Baud Rate
#define BaudRate 9600
//#if defined SOFTUART
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial mySerial(2, 3); // UNO RX=D5, TX=D6
//SoftwareSerial mySerial(10, 6); // MEGA RX=D10, TX=D6
//#endif
void setup() {
Serial.begin(BaudRate);
while (!Serial) ;   // Leonardo
//#if defined SOFTUART
  mySerial.begin(BaudRate);
//#endif
}
void loop() {
  int i=0,x=0;
  while (Serial.available()) {
    inbuff[i]=Serial.read();
    i++;
  }
  for(x=0;x<i;x++){
    mySerial.write(inbuff[x]); 
  }
int j=0;
while (mySerial.available()) {
outbuff[j]=mySerial.read();
   j++;
 }
 for(x=0;x<j;x++){
   Serial.write(outbuff[x]); 
 }
}

( 3 ) Steps and results

After we finished the firmware burn, open serial tool of Arduino IDE.

Install BLE controller APP on Android phone. User Light Blue on iPhone.

In this tutorial, we will use Android phone for example, open BLE Controller, choose Simple Chat, then connect the gateway, we can send data now.

Documents

nRF51822_SimpleChat_NRF51_DK