nRF52840 Dongle

Designed for nRF Connect for Desktop

The nRF52840 Dongle is a small, low-cost USB dongle that supports Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, ZigBee, 802.15.4, ANT and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols. The Dongle is the perfect target hardware for use with nRF Connect for Desktop as it is low-cost but still support all the short range wireless standards used with Nordic devices. The dongle has been designed to be used as a wireless HW device together with nRF Connect for Desktop. For other use cases please do note that there is no debug support on the Dongle, only support for programming the device and communicating through USB.

It is supported by most of the nRF Connect for Desktop apps and will automatically be programmed if needed. In addition custom applications can be compiled and downloaded to the Dongle. It has a user programmable RGB LED, a green LED, a user programmable button as well as 15 GPIO accessible from castellated solder points along the edge. Example applications are available in the nRF5 SDK under the board name PCA10059.

The nRF52840 Dongle is supported by nRF Connect for Desktop as well as programming through nRFUtil.

The box includes an nRF52840 Dongle.

Download nRF52840 Dongle product brief [PDF]

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nRF52 Series development kits

Overview

nRF52 DK

The nRF52 DK is a Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth mesh development kit for the nRF52805, nRF52810 and nRF52832 SoCs.

nRF52840 DK

The nRF52840 DK is a Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh, Thread and Zigbee development kit for the nRF52811 and nRF52840 SoCs.

nRF52840 Dongle

The nRF52840 Dongle is complementary hardware to the nRF Connect for Desktop. It supports Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh, Thread and Zigbee.

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Utilizing

nRF52840 SoC

Bluetooth 5.2 SoC supporting Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Thread and Zigbee

64 MHz Arm Cortex-M4 with FPU
1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM
2 Mbps, 1 Mbps, Long Range
Bluetooth Low Energy
Bluetooth mesh
Thread, Zigbee
+8 dBm TX Power
128-bit AES CCM, Arm CryptoCell-310
UART, SPI, TWI, PDM, I2S, QSPI, PWM
12-bit ADC
NFC
USB 2.0

Relevant SDKs

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nRF5 SDK

The Bluetooth LE and ANT software development kit

The nRF5 SDK is a high quality, thoroughly tested software development kit to accelerate your software development efforts for the nRF52 and nRF51 Series SoCs. It contains hundreds of useful firmware modules and examples to assist in building your application.

nRF Connect SDK

nRF Connect SDK is a common software development kit for cellular IoT and short-range wireless, on the nRF9160 SiP, the nRF5340 SoC and all nRF52 Series SoCs.

nRF5 SDK for Mesh

The nRF5 SDK for mesh is ideal for developing applications that use Bluetooth mesh networks . It is a richly featured SDK for building sophisticated solutions with Bluetooth mesh.

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SoftDevices

Compatible with the nRF52840 Dongle

SoftDevice S140

SoftDevice S140 is a feature-rich Central and Peripheral Bluetooth LE protocol stack for the nRF52811, nRF52820, nRF52833 and nRF52840 SoCs.

Bluetooth 5.1 qualified
High-throughput 2 Mbps
Long Range
Advertising Extensions
CSA #2
LE Secure Connections
Privacy 1.2
Configurable ATT Table
Configurable ATT MTU
Custom UUID
LE Data Packet Length Extension
L2CAP connection-oriented channels
Concurrent multiprotocol support

SoftDevice S340

SoftDevice S340 is a combined Bluetooth LE and ANT protocol stack supporting concurrent operation on the nRF52840 SoC. It is distributed and Bluetooth qualified by Garmin Canada, Inc.

15 individual configurable ANT channels
Broadcast, acknowledged, burst transfer
Device search, pairing and proximity
Advanced burst transfer mode

Bluetooth 5 qualified
High-throughput 2 Mbps
Long Range
Advertising Extensions
CSA #2
LE Secure Connections
Privacy 1.2
Configurable ATT Table
Configurable ATT MTU
Custom UUID
LE Data Packet Length Extension
L2CAP connection-oriented channels
Concurrent multiprotocol support

Development tools

Test and verify

nRF Connect for Desktop

nRF Connect for Desktop is a cross-platform framework for development applications. It contains applications for testing Bluetooth Low Energy and LTE links, power optimization, programming and more.

nRF Connect for Mobile

nRF Connect for Mobile is a powerful generic mobile tool that allows you to scan and explore your Bluetooth Low Energy devices and communicate with them. Also supports DFU and Eddystone.