Nordic launches low-cost USB dongle for its nRF Connect for Desktop PC tool that is compatible with all nRF-supported, short-range wireless standards

This further simplifies the application design and program development process because the developer can see exactly what the wireless device is doing from the get-go on their PC desktop and without having to invest in a full development kit.

The ‘nRF52840 Dongle’ supports all major wireless standards including Bluetooth® Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, ZigBee, 802.15.4, ANT and 2.4GHz proprietary applications running on the Nordic nRF52840 multi-protocol System-on-Chip (SoC). It also has a user-programmable RGB LED plus physical push-button, a green LED, as well as 15 GPIO accessible solder points along the edge. To give users a flying-start, example applications have been made available in the Nordic nRF5 SDK under the board name ‘PCA10059’.

“The nRF52840 Dongle is a very clever little piece of hardware that is designed to be the ideal front-end, physical gateway for our nRF Connect for Desktop PC tool,” comments Pål Kastnes, Technical Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor.

“It supports all the major short-range wireless standards that can run on the multi-protocol Nordic nRF52840 SoC and can even function as a basic development kit. That’s a lot of value packed into something that will retail for around $10 and will often save customers having to buy two separate development kits when developing, for example, a product that involves a smartphone app that communicates with a separate piece of hardware such as an activity tracker.”

The nRF52840 Dongle can also be programmed through the Nordic Semiconductor nRFutil utility. (The nRFutil is a Python package and command-line utility that supports Device Firmware Updates (DFUs) and cryptographic functionality.)