The Nordic nRF52840 pre-development kit, available from Mouser Electronics, allows developers to evaluate wireless connectivity designs based on the nRF52840 embedded SoC. The kit includes four user-programmable buttons and LEDs, is hardware-compatible with Arduino R3-based boards, and features connector pins for all inputs and outputs (I/O) and interfaces, including a dedicated connector for the included external NFC antenna.
The nRF52840 SoC is based on the architecture of Nordic Semiconductor's existing nRF52 series SoCs to support Bluetooth Low Energy and other low-power wireless applications. The nRF52840 SoC employs a 64MHz 32-bit ARM® Cortex®-M4f processor, the same one used in the Nordic nRF52832 SoC, along with a CPU that offers powerful general-purpose, floating-point, and digital signal processor (DSP) performance.
The nRF52840 PDKs comply with the Bluetooth 5 specification, which, along with increased maximum output power, allows the nRF52840 SoC to offer Bluetooth Low Energy wireless connectivity with up to four times the range or up to twice the raw data bandwidth (2 Mbps) compared to BLE or Bluetooth 4.2 implementations. In addition to Bluetooth 5 support, the nRF52840 SoC includes IEEE 802.15.4 capabilities for ZigBee and Thread-based smart home technologies, or as a network adaptation layer with 6LoWPAN and standard Internet protocols. The nRF52840 SoC's 802.15.4 support significantly expands its capabilities as an interoperable technology for IoT, smart home, or industrial sensor wireless networks that utilize various different wireless technologies.
