.. _circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160:

nRF9160 Feather ###############

.. figure:: img/circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160.jpg :align: center :alt: Circuit Dojo nRF9160 Feather

 nRF9160 Feather (Credit: Circuit Dojo)

Overview

The nRF9160 Feather by Circuit Dojo is a single-board development for bringing your LTE-M and NB-IoT applications to life. The circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160 board configuration leverages the pre-existing support for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF9160. Supported nRF9160 peripherals include:

• :abbr:ADC (Analog to Digital Converter)
• CLOCK
• FLASH
• :abbr:GPIO (General Purpose Input Output)
• :abbr:I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit)
• :abbr:MPU (Memory Protection Unit)
• :abbr:NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)
• :abbr:PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)
• :abbr:RTC (nRF RTC System Clock)
• Segger RTT (RTT Console)
• :abbr:SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface)
• :abbr:UARTE (Universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter with EasyDMA)
• :abbr:WDT (Watchdog Timer)
• :abbr:IDAU (Implementation Defined Attribution Unit)

More information about the board can be found at the nRF9160 Feather Documentation_.

Hardware

.. figure:: img/nrf9160-feather-v31-features.jpg :align: center :alt: nRF9160 Feather Features

Connections and IOs

The nRF9160 Feather has everything you know and love about the Feather platform. Here are some of the highlights:

LED

• D7 (blue) = P0.03

Push buttons and Switches

• MODE = P0.12
• RESET

USB

Contains a USB/UART connection for both debugging and loading new code using a UART Enabled MCUBoot.

Standard Battery Connection

The nRF9160 Feather has a 2 pin battery connector on board. Lithium Polymer batteries > 300mA required.

Nano SIM Holder

The nRF9160 Feather has a built-in nano SIM (4FF) holder located on the bottom side.

Programming and Debugging

circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160 has a Tag Connect TC2030-CTX-NL. It can be used by most programmers like:

• J-Link (the nRF53-DK is recommended)
• CMSIS-DAP based programmers

Check out Getting Started_ for more info.

Building an application

In most cases you'll want to use the ns target with any of the Zephyr or Nordic based examples.

.. note:: Trusted Firmware-M (TF-M) and building the ns target is not supported for this board.

Some of the examples do not use secure mode, so they do not require the ns suffix. A great example of this is the hello_world below.

Flashing

Follow the instructions in the :ref:nordic_segger page to install and configure all the necessary software. Further information can be found in :ref:nordic_segger_flashing. Then build and flash applications as usual (see :ref:build_an_application and :ref:application_run for more details).

Here is an example for the :zephyr:code-sample:hello_world application.

First, run your favorite terminal program to listen for output.

.. code-block:: console

$ screen /dev/<tty_device> 115200

Replace :code:<tty_device> with the port where the nRF9160 Feather can be found. In most cases (On Linux/Mac) it will be: :code:/dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART.

Then build and flash the application in the usual way.

.. zephyr-app-commands:: :zephyr-app: samples/hello_world :board: circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160 :goals: build flash

Debugging

Refer to the :ref:nordic_segger page to learn about debugging Nordic boards with a Segger IC.

Testing the LEDs and buttons on the nRF9160 Feather

There are 2 samples that allow you to test that the buttons (switches) and LEDs on the board are working properly with Zephyr:

• :zephyr:code-sample:blinky
• :zephyr:code-sample:button

You can build and flash the examples to make sure Zephyr is running correctly on your board. The button and LED definitions can be found in :zephyr_file:boards/circuitdojo/feather/circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160_common.dtsi.

References

.. target-notes::

Side note This page was based on the documentation for the nRF9160 DK. Thanks to Nordic for developing a great platform!

.. _nRF9160 Feather Documentation: https://docs.jaredwolff.com/nrf9160-introduction.html .. _Getting Started: https://docs.jaredwolff.com/nrf9160-getting-started.html