Getting Started with Nordic nRF52 on a Mac

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Thanks to Aaron for writing in to share this tutorial with us!

Several months ago, I went to promotional conference for a microcontroller on a whim. I’d heard about it the night before, and after some investigation I found out I could get a free development board out of it. Did somebody say free??? Yeah, that’s me. So I got the board and promptly did nothing with it, because electronics development chains are still the apple of Windows’ eye (see what I did there?)

Anyway, if you want to develop for a Nordic nRF52 Dev Kit on a Mac, I’m going to show you how to setup your machine, how to start a quick project, and load it onto the board.

There are 3 steps we’re going to go through:

  • Getting the development tools installed
  • Getting and updating the SDK
  • Building and installing an example project.

My hope is that this is enough to get anyone developing for the board. I won’t be covering debug tools (because I haven’t figured out how to yet) or more general programming things like How do I write a Makefile?, or How do I utilize the SoftDevice to get Bluetooth? I probably don’t know the answers to these questions, but this is what’s worked for me*.

Read more.


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