Seeed Studio XIAO nRF52840 1: Programming with Arduino IDE and nRF Connect SDK

This very small and inexpensive developer board from Seeed is equipped with the Nordic Semiconductor SoC nRF52840 and can be programmed with both the Arduino IDE and the nRF Connect SDK. It supports BLE and also OpenThread via Zephyr. The Xiao has an Arduino bootloader and the firmware in uf2 format can be easily transferred to the chip using drag and drop. In this video, we first explore the board's features, program a Blink example first with the Arduino IDE and then with Zephyr via the nRF Connect SDK.
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--Hardware-----
Seeed Studio XIAO nRF52840:
www.seeedstudio.com/Seeed-XIA...
--Software--------
Arduino IDE:
www.arduino.cc/en/software
nRF Connect SDK:
www.nordicsemi.com/Products/D...
Visual Studio Code:
code.visualstudio.com/
00:00 Indroduction
00:23 Unboxing
02:00 Properties
02:58 Pinout
04:14 Battery charger
05:15 Bootloader mode
06:06 Install Arduino IDE board library
07:11 Blink example with Arduino IDE
10:21 Blink example with Zephyr
13:56 Outro

[@mrafayshams3089]

Thank you for this! Please do a series on this as well. Especially using Thread, Zigbee, UDP, and possibly Matter.

[@wizardy6267]

The Xiao board seems pretty cool, thanks for your video :)

[@MarkSze]

Worked perfectly, thank you!

[@bluestek]

Thank you!!! I didn't know you could use nRF connect sdk without changing the bootloader! Time to see if I can get it setup to use matter/thread!

[@mathicalee]

My favorite board 😁 Didn't do much with it yet, but the size is great! One thing I don't like is the bootloader, but I guess this is the way to go if you want to flash over USB without a debugger thing or something like that. nRF52840 Dongle also works similar I guess.
I tried with Xiao BLE to compile matter examples, but it failed saying the flash was too big. If I remember correctly, the flash size of Xiao BLE should have been smaller than nRF52840 DK or Dongle. Maybe because of dual flash takes more space even with bigger flash drive. I don't know.

[@themalicraft979]

Great video! Exactly what I was looking for.
Do you also plan on doing a tutorial how to use its ble functionality? Or how how to use debugging / serial monitor with it?

[@wsniot]

Thx. BLE is on my list, but i dont know when yet.

[@mrafayshams3089]

Hi, I've been trying to use the UART Rx/Tx pins on the XIAO for UART communication between microcontrollers, but it doesn't seem to work. Do you happen to know if UART communication between the XIAO and some other MCU is possible or not? Can we even use the gpio pins of the XIAO for let's say an external button or LED?

[@lucamoioli3424]

Very interesting board. I am comfortable with ArduinoIDE, but I would like to implement also Ant connectivity, so I think I need to use nrf5-sdk. I'm a bit confused on which ide and compiler I should use. I mean, Segger , IAR, nrf connect... which is better?

[@wsniot]

The compiler is anyway mostly GNU-ARM-compiler. I think IAR has its own one, but can be used with the GNU-compiler too. But I would stick with the GNU-ARM-compiler. It is the most popular compiler. With the IDE is up to you what you like, but Nordic goes more and more to VSCode only and it is the most used and a quiete powerful IDE and also free. IAR Workbench is quiete expensive.

[@lucamoioli3424]

@@wsniot understand.. thank you a lot. I will continue following your amazing job

[@maksymkoval1754]

I tried to flush Zephyr BLE Led Button Service (LSB) example, but it wasn't working for me.
But simple Zephyr blinky example worked.
Do you know why it's like this?

[@maksymkoval1754]

I was able to run examples in /zephyr/samples/bluetooth

[@ernestorivero9909]

Necesito saber ante de comprarla si aparte de bluetooth ble usa bluetooth clasico.

[@stefanlabich8677]

Thank you very much for this series about Zephyr/nRF Connect SDK, it is very helpful to me!
I've tried the CLI example for the Full-Thread-Device on the XIAO BLE. It works, but never leaves the child role.
The reason seems to be this:
uart:~$ > ot routereligible enable
ot routereligible enable
Error 27: NotCapable
This also happens with an Adafruit Itsybitsy nRF52840, both boards have the uf2 bootloader.
Using the Nordic nRF52840 dongle, FTD works flawlessly and the device switches to router role.
Do You have any ideas what is going wrong?

[@ernestorivero9909]

need to know before buying it if apart from bluetooth ble uses classic bluetooth.

[@wsniot]

As i know Bluetooth Classic (BR/EDR) is not supported from the nRF52840 only BLE.