nRF52840 DKDevelopment kit

Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Thread and Zigbee development kit for the nRF52840 SoC

The nRF52840 DK is a versatile single-board development kit for Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee, 802.15.4, ANT and 2.4 GHz proprietary applications on the nRF52840 SoC. It also supports development on the nRF52811 SoC.

The nRF52840 DK can also be used for Matter over Thread where Thread is used for transport and Bluetooth LE for commissioning. Matter devices based on Thread are required to feature Bluetooth LE concurrently to enable adding new devices to a network.

It facilitates development by exploiting all features of the nRF52840 SoC. It includes an NFC antenna that quickly enables utilization of the NFC-A tag peripheral. All GPIOs are available via edge connectors and headers, and 4 buttons and 4 LEDs simplify input and output to and from the SoC. An on-board external memory is connected to the QSPI peripheral in the nRF52840 SoC.

It is Arduino Uno Revision 3 compatible, making it possible to mount 3rd-party shields with ease. It comes with an on-board SEGGER J-Link debugger allowing programming and debugging both the on-board SoC and external targets through the debug out header. It also interfaces directly with the Power Profiler Kit II.

The DK is typically powered with USB, but can be powered by a wide range of sources, within the supply range of 1.7 to 5.0 V. In addition to USB, it can be powered with an external source, but also includes a CR2032 battery holder and a Li-Po battery connector, for in-field testing. Current consumption can be measured by using the dedicated current measurement pins.

Hardware layout and schematics for the nRF52840 DK are available under Downloads.

Download nRF52840 DK product brief [PDF]

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Key features

Supports Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Matter, Thread and Zigbee

User-programmable LEDs(4) and buttons(4)

2.4 GHz and NFC antennas

SWF RF connector for direct RF measurements

On-board SEGGER J-Link debugger/programmer

Arduino Uno Rev3 form factor

Pins for measuring power consumption

1.7-5.0 V supply from USB, external, Li-Po battery or CR2032 coin cell battery

Documentation
Downloads
CE Certification

Requirements

Your nRF52840 DK must be running firmware v1.1.0 or later.
Kits with hardware revision 1.1.0 or later are shipped with this firmware. You can find your hardware revision on the white sticker on the front of the PCB.

If step 5) below fails, you need to re-program the factory example code into the flash.
Click here for instructions.

Connect and test

the nRF52840 DK

  2. What's included in the box: the nRF52840 DK and a flexible NFC antenna.
  3. If you plan to use NFC, connect the NFC antenna to the board. The connector is marked "NFC" and is located by the edge of the board near the 4 buttons.
  4. Use a micro USB 2.0 cable to connect the nRF52840 DK to one of your PC's USB host ports. This provides power to the board and supports target programming.
  5. Flip the power switch to "on". Find it near the micro USB connector. If a popup appears, ignore it for now.
  6. Confirm that LED 1 starts pulsing.
  7. Use buttons 1 to 4 to control which respective LED pulses.

Heart Rate Sensor

Demo

Go to the Google Play or Apple App Store to download the nRF Toolbox app to your mobile phone.

Download the Heart rate monitor demo and follow the instructions in the readme.txt.

This demo broadcasts simulated EKG values from the nRF52840 DK to the nRF Toolbox app, which then displays the received data as an EKG curve.

After completion, setup our nRF Connect SDK toolchain to get started with firmware development.

Video tutorials

View and learn

See all videos

Bluetooth 5 - 2 Mbps

Bluetooth 5 - Long Range 

Concurrent Thread and Bluetooth 5

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