SparkFun Pro NRF52840 Mini – Bluetooth Development Board

The SparkFun Pro nRF52840 Mini is a breakout and development board for Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52840 – a powerful combination of ARM Cortex-M4 CPU and 2.4GHz Bluetooth radio. With the nRF52840 at the heart of your project, you’ll be presented with a seemingly endless list of project possibilities in an incredibly small package.

Our mini development board for the nRF52840 breaks out most of the critical I/O pins including GPIO and those needed for power while maintaining a small footprint that nearly matches that of the Arduino Pro Mini (except those covered by the Qwiic Connector). It features a USB interface (using the nRF52840’s native USB support), which can be used to program, power, and communicate with the chip making it able to be used for any purpose (UART, I²C, SPI) that those of the Arduino Pro Mini could. The Pro nRF52840 Mini features a Raytac MDBT50Q-P1M module. This module connects the nRF52840 to a trace antenna, fits the IC into an FCC-approved footprint, and also includes a lot of the decoupling and timing mechanisms that would otherwise be required for a bare nRF52840 design. Also included onboard is a LiPo battery charger, a Qwiic connector, an on/off switch, a reset switch, and a user LED/button.

The board comes pre-programmed with a USB bootloader. You can develop programs for the nRF52840’s Cortex-M4 using either Arduino, Circuit Python, or C (using Nordic’s nRF5 SDK), and load that compiled code using a USB serial or mass-storage interface.

Get Started with the Sparkfun Pro NRF52840 Mini Guide

Features

• ARM Cortex-M4 CPU with floating point unit (FPU)
  • 1MB internal Flash — For all of your program, SoftDevice, and file-storage needs!
  • 256kB internal RAM — For your stack and heap storage.
• Integrated 2.4GHz radio with support for:
  • Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) — With peripheral and/or central BLE device support
  • Bluetooth 5 — Mesh Bluetooth!
  • ANT — If you want to turn the device into a heart-rate or exercise monitor.
  • Nordic’s proprietary RF protocol — If you want to communicate, securely, with other Nordic devices.
• Every I/O peripheral you could need
  • USB — Turn your nRF52840 into a USB mass-storage device, use a CDC (USB serial) interface, and more. This is a big add compared to the

    nRF52832

    !

  • UART — Serial interfaces with support for hardware flow-control if desired.
  • I²C — Everyone’s favorite 2-wire bi-directional bus interface
  • SPI — If you prefer the 3+-wire serial interface
  • Analog-to-digital converters (ADC) — Eight pins on the nRF52840 Mini Breakout support analog inputs
  • PWM — Timer support on any pin means PWM support for driving LEDs or servo motors.
  • Real-time clock (RTC) — Keep close track of seconds and milliseconds, also supports timed deep-sleep features.
• Peripheral-multiplexing — (Nearly) any pin can support any of the above features.

Resources

• Schematic

• Eagle Files

• Graphical Datasheet

• Hookup Guide

• Datasheet

  (MDBT50Q)

• Bootloader Source Code

• Nordic nRF5 SDK

• Arduino Core for nRF Boards

• CircuitPython nRF Port

• GitHub