Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF series of wireless products have been getting more and more popular, and for good reason. The nRF52832 used in this Arduino Pro Mini replacement is a powerful ARM Cortex M4F 32-bit processor with 512 kB of program memory — quite an upgrade over the 8-bit ATmega328p’s 32 kB. Even more important than program memory, at least to me, is the huge increase in RAM from 2 kB to 64 kB!
But it wouldn’t be a Nordic Semiconductor product without a capable 2.4GHz radio built right into the same chip. This particular chip is Bluetooth 5.2 capable, meaning it can do BLE, Bluetooth Mesh, as well as the high-speed 2 Mbps BLE mode; it can also do ANT, as well as any other 2.4 GHz stack (with the exception of WiFi). Oh, and I forgot to mention, it also supports NFC-A, including wakeup-on-field and touch-to-pair capabilities. This little chip is a monster!
Andy, the designer and proprietor of Pro Mini Micros, even got the nod of approval from Nordic’s engineers, as well as some help tuning the antenna. It’s not FCC certified, so you couldn’t use it in a commercial product, but it’s fine for prototyping and personal projects. You can rest assured that it’s not bleeding RF power all across the spectrum. Oh, why is his business called Pro Mini Micros? This isn’t the only Pro Mini footprint device he has made — he’s also made a version with the ATmega1284P, a stepping stone on his search for a bigger and badder processor for the Pro Mini footprint.
This is seriously a very cool chip, and the fact that it’s in a standard footprint means that any add-on boards that work with the Pro Mini should work out of the box with the Pro Mini nRF52. Also, just like the original Pro Mini, the nRF52 is programmable from the Arduino IDE using any FTDI serial programmer. Pretty awesome!
