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

Nordic Semiconductor today announces that it has launched a low-cost, ($10 suggested-retail) USB Dongle for its nRF Connect for Desktop PC tool that allows developers to immediately connect their PCs to a wireless device with only one end of the wireless link available.

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.)