Support the NRFICE project on CrowdSupply

With your support, which means subscribing for email updates, the NRFICE project will go forward on CrowdSupply.com, and become an available product for developers to purchase. With the NRFICE base board in production, we will be able to offer working versions of our products that use NRFICE as the base platform. The MidiBass guitar to MIDI processor is the first project on the list to be built as an add-on to the NRFICE platform.

Click here to go to CrowdSupply and enter your email address. THANK YOU!

NRFICE allows for rapid prototyping of mobile peripheral and edge computing devices. With fewer wires and no programming dongles, many things are possible. Educators can provide experimentation hardware to students with minimal bring-up. Our community can easily develop new sample projects. Once underway, any of the complete sample builds can be chosen in a list on the mobile app and immediately programmed into the board with a phone, no other wires/dongles needed.

A Powerful Combination of nRF5340 and ICE40UP5K

We believe the combination of the nRF5340 and ICE40UP5K is the best chip set for development of edge computing applications. The ICE40UP5K already has examples from Lattice that interface to image sensors and implement AI models for gesture detection, and there are many more existing open source projects for the ICE40 family that perform cutting edge tasks.

In using both, developers and students are getting real world development experience on an FPGA family that is also cost effective in volume production environments. This is in contrast to a lot of DIY projects using Arduino, and others, where the skills learned are not easily carried into industry where cost, size, and manufacturability are serious issues.

Now, importantly, you’ve got your ICE40 for edge computing/AI tasks, but how does it communicate with the outside world? There’s always an MCU to work the marionette strings. We think the nRF5340 is the best choice for development. Nordic semi, as well as module makers like Fanstel, have a rich list of parts at various performance and price points, so when you’ve got your design proven on NRFICE, you can then choose the most cost effective alternative.

Features & Specifications

NRFICE

• Arduino UNO compatible form factor and 0.1” pinout
• 9 V - 12 V barrel power connector and 5 V 3 A regulator
• 128 Mbit external flash memory, accessible from ICE40 or nRF
• Fanstel BT40 module with trace antenna FCC approved
• Four buttons, reset for each of ICE40 and nRF, and a user programmable button for each
• Two RGB leds, one each for nRF and ICE40
• USB-C for JLink-OB, providing dongle-free programming and debugging of nRF5340 as well as pass through VCOM serial port to nRF5340
• USB-C for nRF5340, providing VCOM serial port, and other USB implementations per code
• Wireless loading of example projects for nRF and ICE40 with Android app

NRFICE Android App

• Open source: copy and adapt to your ideas
• Wireless programming and configuration of nRF5340 and ICE40 FPGA
• Incorporate re-programming of FPGA into your product design for ultimate flexibility
• RGB Led control example
• Other examples coming soon

JLink-OB

• Link OB is an on-board debug probe
• Same features as J-Link BASE
• Fully compatible with J-Link BASE
• Compatible with most IDEs
• Virtual COM Port

nRF5340

• High-performance application processor
  • 128/64 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 with FPU and DSP instructions
  • 1 MB Flash + 512 KB RAM
  • 8 KB 2-way set associative cache
• Fully-programmable network processor
  • 64 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 with 2 KB instruction cache
  • 256 KB Flash + 64 KB RAM
• Next level security
  • Trusted execution with Arm TrustZone
  • Hardware accelerated cryptography with Arm CryptoCell-312
  • Secure Key Storage
  • Secure bootloader with root-of-trust and DFU
• Bluetooth Low Energy
  • Bluetooth 5.3
  • LE Audio
  • Direction Finding
  • 2 Mbps, Advertising Extensions and Long Range
• Bluetooth mesh
• Thread, Zigbee and 802.15.4
• NFC
• Full range of digital interfaces with EasyDMA
  • Full-speed USB
  • 96 MHz encrypted QSPI
  • 32 MHz high-speed SPI
• 105 °C extended operating temperature
• 1.7 - 5.5 V supply voltage range

ICE40UP5K

• 5280 LUTs
• Ultra-low Power, 100 uA standby current typical
• 1024 kb Single Port SRAM
• 120 kb sysMEM™ Embedded Block RAM
• Hardened I2C Interfaces
• I3C interface
• Two Hardened SPI Interfaces
• Low Frequency Oscillator – 10 kHz
• High Frequency Oscillator – 48 MHz
• 24 mA Current Drive RGB LED Outputs
• On-chip DSP, Signed and unsigned 8-bit or 16-bit functions, Multiply-Accumulate (MAC)
• Internal Nonvolatile Configuration Memory (NVCM)