Segger connector

If your device has a connector that is meant for The Segger JLink programmer, you can find the pin layout at https://www.segger.com/jlink-adapters.html#CM_9pin. The default programmer with the Nordic development kit comes with the J-Link 9-pin Cortex-M adapter.

The ones that you will need to break out are four wires that at the top:

1. VTref
2. SWDIO
3. GND
4. SWCLK

The first one is optional! It does not provide power, it is used to measure if the target board does have power.

ST-Link programmer

The ST-Link programmer is not easy obtainable, just as the J-Link programmer is actually hard to come by as a separate product.

For that reason it is worth to check into the STM32FDISCOVERY board. You can get the STM32FDISCOVERY at Mouser for € 13,47. This board is anyway fun, it has a lot of GPIO (pins) and it has an ST-Link on-board.

On the STM32 board you see a connector with the label SWD. We need to pins from there. From the top (where there is the USB connection), we need the second pin and connect it to SWCLK. From the top we need also the fourth pin, and connect it to SWDIO.

The Crownstone (or RFduino, or any other nRF51822 board) needs then also to be powered and grounded. The power can be fed to the device also from the STM32 board. You can connect one of the pins labeled 3V on the right of the board to the corresponding pin on your device. Ground can be obtained from many pins, pick one labeled GND. The VTref pin from the J-Link does not have a corresponding VTref pin on the ST-Link. On the STM32FDiscovery board probably somewhere internally the reference voltage is measured. So, you’ll only have to break out three pins of the cable to connect it:

2. SWDIO
3. GND
4. SWCLK

Use something like a logic analyzer to see if you do things wrong. This is a very, very useful tool that can save you a lot of time.

Scripts

Normally the Crownstone we program with the J-Link from Segger, but if you want to use this cheaper solution, we also created some files for you at the BlueNet repository at github.

Combination

First of all you can combine all the required binaries into one big binary. This is done by the script combine.sh. Before you use it, you will need to install srec_cat on your system. On Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install srecord

If you call the script it basically just runs srec_cat:

./combine.sh

And you will see that it runs something like if you only want the SoftDevice and the Crownstone for example:

srec_cat /opt/softdevices/s110_nrf51822_7.0.0_softdevice.hex -intel crownstone.bin -binary -offset 0x00016000 -o combined.bin

You have to adjust that file on the moment manually to switch between softdevices.

OpenOCD

Subsequently, we are gonna set up OpenOCD. You should not use the one from the Ubuntu repository: it is too old. In case you installed it before:

 sudo apt-get remove --purge openocd

Download fom github and compile the source:

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/ntfreak/openocd
sudo aptitude install libtool automake libusb-1.0-0-dev expect
cd openocd
./bootstrap 
./configure --enable-stlink
make
sudo make install

You will see that there are several files on github that you can use. There is a 49-stlinkv2.rules file that you can use for udev so that no superuser rights are required to use the ST-Link. There is also an openocd.cfg file that sets the defaults for the hardware we are gonna use (the nrf51 series).

To start OpenOCD you can use our scripts again:

./flash_openocd.sh init

This will start the daemon that subsequently can be talked to over telnet. You can try that if you want to (but this is not necessary):

./flash_openocd.sh connect
> help
> exit

To actually upload the binaries you have created, you can use:

./flash_openocd.sh upload combined.hex

This will upload the binary you have previously composed to the target. Ready you are!

Debugging

If your target does not have pins to break out UART, it might be worth to first try and start experimenting with the RFduino. That board has enough pins broken out, to see what for example the Crownstone code is actually doing. For example if you combine a SoftDevice with the wrong bootloader, you will see proper error messages. If you know how to hook up gdb over OpenOCD, please feel free to file an issue at https://github.com/dobots/bluenet/ and I will be happy to update this guide.