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Comment by ahartmetz | Hacker News Reader

> is getting crushed by a wave of very low cost Chinese competitors

Oh lordy. Bluetooth is about to get even worse? AFAIK, Nordic's harwdare and software are among the few high quality Bluetooth stacks.

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I am not an engineer and have not dealt with the chinese suppliers directly, but my understanding is that their software, support, and documentation have gotten much better. And they are very very cheap because they use RISC-V and/or inexpensive Chinese alternatives to TSMC.

Maybe the quality of the Chinese competitors is/was worse but ESP32 and its predecessor have completely taken over the cheap BLE/WiFi segment by simply flooding hobbyists and students with ultra-cheap devkits.

Maybe something the Western competitors should learn from.

You can get started with esp32 for $5. Nordic devkits are more expensive, and going past that requires a JTAG programmer, which is an expensive option for hobbyists and students.

It's not surprising that they have taken off like they have. Initially it was because it was inexpensive, but now the community is huge and that is a very attractive selling point.

You can get a BBC micro:bit with Nordic SoC for $15 Not exactly $5, but not very expensive either There's also a decent growing community around them

You've also got the nRF52 USB dongle which seems similar to those cheaper ESP32 kits, for around $10.

> and going past that requires a JTAG programmer

No, the official Nordic devkits comes with a built-in debugger. Same for micro:bit. It's just plain USB.

That said, I do think Nordic could be better at penetrating the hobbyist/student market. I think one problem is the lack of a combined BT/WiFi chip.

I think once Zephyr becomes more mature and there's more tutorials/guides around it, a good BT+Thread+WiFi solution from Nordic could become very popular. Zephyr is a bit hard to get into, but incredibly powerful once you get used to it.

Where are the nRF52 usb dongles for $10?

Have you looked at Mouser or Digikey? $9.60 for per unit, in single unit quantities, heaps in stock as of today.

No, I usually get chips on AliExpress or eBay since I usually use esp32 for free shipping and they're $20 or more on there.

> No, the official Nordic devkits comes with a built-in debugger. Same for micro:bit. It's just plain USB.

Right, the devkits can do this. If you want to go past that, like making your own PCB with a NRF52 on it you need JTAG, which is not a requirement for esp32.

Maybe the NRF52 has some sort of ROM serial loader that I've missed though.

It’s actually possible to use the debugger on the NRF dev kits to flash/debug custom PCBs with NRF chips. So a separate (more expensive) JTAG debugger is in fact not required.

Yes nrf dev boards have an on board j-link, and Nordic provides instructions on how to turn the board into a programmer. Their licensing with segger explicitly allows this as long as you use it for other Nordic devices. Much cheaper than a standalone j-link.

GDB options for debugging/flashing can be had for sub 10eur, Segger is not mandatory. Moreover, the onboard Segger of the devkit can be used externally on Nordic MCUs in custom products and is covered by the licensing agreement between Nordic and Segger for this usecase.

For $9.90 you get a Seeed Xiao NRF52840[1] board with Arduino support. In sleep mode it consumes just 1µA. In my spare time I'm building smart locks with these that last for up to 2 years with a CR123 battery. Recently I switched from Arduino to the nrf Connect SDK and a tiny nrf52832 board that cost just 4$ on AliExpress. Works like a charm.

[1] https://www.seeedstudio.com/Seeed-XIAO-BLE-nRF52840-p-5201.h...

Yeah, Nordic crushes it right now with their sleep mode. Espressif is making progress in that area, though, but they have a lot of ground to make up.

Out of curiosity, how do you flash the nrf52832 board?

With SWD and a Tag-Connect connector[1]. I watched someone on youtube recommend it due to the small space and low profile. You can use the VSCode NRF Connect SDK plugin (coupled with Jlink or NRF52 dev kit) to flash the device. But of course you can just use USB und copy a generated .hex file directly on the device. I use SWD because its faster to flash many boards by just pressing the pogo pins on the connector pad. Boom done. :)

[1] https://www.tag-connect.com/product/tc2030-ctx-nl-6-pin-no-l...

Isn't the JTAG programmer something you can run on any old arduino if you happen to have one lying around?

You can load Black Magic Probe firmware on a bluepill and have JTAG for about $2. I also ported it to nRF52840 if you have an extra dongle laying around. Or esp8266 for debugging over wifi (wireless JTAG is super useful sometimes.)

Segger has been really successful at marketing "JTAG == JLink" but it is just not true.

ST-LinkV2s, including the $8USD clones, work on nRF. (StLink-V3 does not).

Definitely! And make sure to sell to consumers too if you want to compete. Anecdotal, but I wanted to build a 3D printer, most parts are simply not available in the EU if you are normal person. Even stuff like hex-bolts and t-nuts are impossible to source in the EU outside of specialty webshops where the markup is 2000%.

And that was just the mechanical parts...

Do you not have anything like Home Depot/Grainger/McMaster-Carr in the EU? A quick check shows 3/8"-16 T-Nuts are $10/10, $15/50, and $33/100 respectively, with the first two available within a 15 minute drive of my location in the US.

I think the above comment is talking about domestically produced items?

I don't know about any such EU-wide store.

The small local hardware store near me is great for common things like M3+ screws, but understandably doesn't stock slightly exotic items like M1.6 threaded inserts. There's larger e-shops that sell those, though I can't speak to the markup. Larger parts are generally easier to find.

> Maybe something the Western competitors should learn from.

Back in the day our university was flooded with Atmel AVR kits.

I don't know about my university now, but many high schools now use BBC micro:bit kits, which uses Nordic Semi SoCs.

They don't exactly make their own Bluetooth stack yet, e.g. the one chinese RISCV board I have seen used IP from RivieraWaves (made in France & Israel):

https://www.ceva-dsp.com/product/rivierawaves-bluetooth-plat...

At the end of the day, 2.4 GHz frontends can be done in the same silicon process that makes your SoC and the antenna needs to be nothing more than a PCB trace, so what on earth was going to save Nordic from competition?

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