Designs based on Nordic Semiconductor‘s dual processor, SoC nRF5340, can be tested and evaluated with a preview development kit (PDK). The kit is now available from Rutronik UK and supported with the nRF Connect software development kit (SDK).

The SoC nRF5340 supports Bluetooth Low Energy as well as all functions of Bluetooth 5.1 and Bluetooth 5, plus Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee, NFC, ANT, 802.15.4 and 2,4GHz proprietary for wearable and medical devices, smart home, asset tracking, real time locating systems (RTLS), industrial equipment and professional lighting.

The PDK includes a near field communication (NFC) antenna to test the SoC’s NFC-A tag peripheral. A J-Link debugger from Segger programs and debugs the SoC and external targets. The kit is hardware compatible with the Arduino Uno Revision 3, enabling standard external shields, for example the Power Profiler kit, to be interfaced.

There are also four user-programmable LEDs and four buttons for input and output. The kit can be powered by USB or an external source and requires a CR2032 battery holder and a Li-Po battery connector for in-field testing.

The SDK includes Zephyr RTOS, protocol stacks, application examples and hardware drivers. Source code management with Git and Segger Embedded Studio IDE are available.

When the nRF5340 SoC is close to being production-ready, developers can replace the PDK with Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF5340 development kit.