SparkFun Pro nRF52840 Mini Hookup Guide
jimblom Introduction
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 2.4 GHz Bluetooth radio. With the nRF52840 at the heart of your project, you'll be presented with a seemingly endless list of project possibilities.
Our "mini" development board for the nRF52840 breaks out most, critical I/O pins while maintaining a small footprint. It features a USB interface (using the nRF52840's native USB support), which can be used to program, power, and communicate with the chip. Also included are a LiPo battery charger, qwiic connector, on/off switch, 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 on using a USB serial or mass-storage interface.
Covered in This Tutorial
This tutorial is designed to introduce you to the nRF52840 and the hardware features of our Pro nRF52840 Mini Breakout. It will help you assemble the board, and then send you on to the software-development method of your choice.
Make sure to check out the Software Development Guides section, which splits into Arduino, Circuit Python, or C (Nordic SDK) development guides.
Required Materials
To follow along with this tutorial, you will need the following materials. You may not need everything, depending on what you already have. Add it to your cart, read through the guide, and adjust the cart as necessary.
Tools
You will need a soldering iron, solder, and general soldering accessories to solder your headers to your nRF52840.
As you look to add more components to your nRF52840 breakout, make sure you check out our line of qwiic boards. The I2C-based qwiic interface is a quick way to prototype and test a huge variety of sensors and ouptuts.
Suggested Reading
This tutorial builds on a variety of electronics, programming, and engineering concepts. If any of the subjects of these tutorials sound foreign to you, consider checking them out before continuing on: