NRF8002
Intro
dear Jay made it so Starnberger Technologie & Innovation donated about 100 of their nrF8002 [0] Sensors, which are a Very Low Power Bluetooth 4.0 devices. They act as a Proximity Sensor and you can hook up other Sensors on the Chip itself so it seems pretty useful for Metasense reboot or, as Jay suggested, for a revised semi-automated Box policy. They are also able to trigger on certain smartphone events (sms, email, call, etc..) "out of the box"
Only problem is: 2 capacitors next to the quartz need to be replaced!
If you are successful with acquiring an already soldered chip or soldered it yourself (soldering++) you can try to program it with the provided example config to play around with.
Oh and be warned, they have AN OPTION to be PERMANENTLY PROGRAMMED, BUT ONLY ONCE! sooo,.. unless you are not 100% don't do that.
Projects
if you are planning on using one of these, give this section an edit eh?
to get you started you need..
- Windows XP/Vista/7/(8?)
- nRFgo Studio [1]
- a USB-Mini to UART Chip which acts as the programmer [2]
- USB-Mini cable
- CR2032 Coin Cell
- (fixed) nRF8002
- example config *.xml [3]
- dexterous & quick hands
you can find most of the stuff in the WEL in a blue plastic bag, which contain 3 blue cardboardboxes.
..and now you do this
- Copypasta the text provided on this subpage [3] and make yourself a *.xml file
- Open nRFgo Studio and open the file with 'Data -> Open -> 8002" and look for your xml
- go to the "upload config" tab,
- MAKE SURE "UPLOAD TO RAM" IS SELECTED unless you are happy with your configuration you can then OTP (one time program) it.
- now plug everything together and prepare yourself to quickly insert the battery into the nrf8002 AND
- click "demonstrate running the command line tool" (alternativly, under %path to nrfgo studio%\productiontool8002\ there is a lonely ublue_cfg.exe which is exactly THAT commandline tool. but you need to create a binary out of this configuration first, there is a button for that under the same tab too.)
- a commandline will open, print some numbers and eventually timeout, that means you are either to late or the chip isnt working.
- if lots of numbers flash down the commandline and stops after 2 secs: grats, your chip just got programmed.
- download the example app for your smartphone from (probably) there [0] and try it.
for those who want to know: so why do you need to be quick with the battery? On Power Up the device first looks if its already been programmed, if it isnt, you have to spam the UART Port with 0xFF to get it into a programmable state, or else it enters a test mode called DTM, in nrfgo studio, there is a tab for that.
Further Information on the chip itself and what you can do with it is provided via example apps at [0]
