Great board. It works well and it is easy to program using SWD and the Nordic DK which I previously used for development. I suggest buying a breakout board like this before thinking your firmware is complete. It turns out aspects of my code that worked on Nordic's DK did not work with this breakout. I was therefore able to fix my program before starting the design of my own PCB. I've been working with nRF52 for my senior year project as an ECE and this product and additional files have been excellent resources.

This is a good board, it does exactly what I need. It was almost trivial to get the Bluetooth up and running, and control a stepper motor controller through it (which also leverages SPI libraries). I've not tested I2C.

The SparkFun Arduino IDE plugin made it simple to get started and accomplished all of the above. My only complaint is that it doesn't include a straightforward flash access functionality from the nRF SDK out of the box. This would be handy for accessing flash without having to do a lot of research. I spent a few hours deep-diving into the SDK, which has half a dozen ways to access flash with various configurations that may or may not work depending on how the device is configured. The best option would be if they could add support for FDS, which is a record-based filesystem driver in the nRF SDK, but it has a fair amount of dependencies and requires understanding of the SoftDevice that might need to be abstracted away for the average Arduino user. nrf_nvmc on the other hand is pretty simple and standalone, and doesn't require any SoftDevice config. You just read internal flash directly from memory addresses and write to addresses in bytes or words using the library functions.

While they do provide their bootloader code, it would also be nice for noobs if they provided their procedure for installing the bootloader to a new chip. I buy from SparkFun for prototyping, but ultimately I want to make my own board. If I want it to work like this one, I do have the Nordic docs regarding bootloader installation, but I'm going to have to do some trial and error to figure out the options they used when flashing the bootloader package. UPDATE: I found their procedure in the Makefile located in the bootloader source repo: https://github.com/sparkfun/nRF52832_Breakout/blob/master/Firmware/bootloader-custom/sparkfun/dual_bank_serial_s132/armgcc/Makefile -- "make flash_softdevice".

ONE WORD OF CAUTION - This device by default is capable of being powered by the serial interface. Unfortunately, the power from this interface does not go through the VIN voltage regulator as one might hope. It goes directly to VDD, so be sure you use a 3.3v serial adapter. I literally caused the nRF chip to smoke and bubble a bit by using a serial adapter configured for an Arduino at 5V. Luckily (perhaps amazingly), nothing got damaged before I noticed my mistake.

I like that the breakout board has the nrf52 on it with all the I/O broken out. Super helpful! It worked out good for the project I was on but it lacked a good 3.3V regulator. The 3.3V regulator Vin max was 6V. I really needed something that could work with Li batteries at around 7.2V. I had to put a different regulator on the board that I thought was pin for pin compatible but the Sparkfun schematic was incorrect for this part and needless to say caused irreparable issues to a board before I caught the difference. The board should really use the TPS76933DBVR regulator. Goes up to 10V!

It was super tough setting up for C after the bootloader just disappeared, but I wasn't much interested in BL. Not much help for using C with this part. I am using the Segger Studio (which is free for Nordic parts, yay!) and a J-Link EDU. I see there is a $20 Adafruit J-Link EDU. I am using the Nordic SDK but it is specific for Nordic dev boards, what a pain in the butt. Not only that, Segger has a SDK for this part auto installed as well. Have to be sure I am not mixing SDK's (like headers). I got it working though, but big learning curve. I plan to clone and extend the Arduino libraries in Git, so you can do stuff besides BLE and gpios.

I was working on a project that was using the RedBearLab BLE Nano v2. When I finished the prototyping, I went to order the quantity I needed for deployment, but found that they were discontinued. (Ugh!) I looked to this board to replace the RedBearLab parts, but this board (while hosting the same Nordic chip) is much more difficult to use.

1. Getting the board back into the boot loader is a challenge. The two button sequence seems to require very specific timing. It takes me a number of tries to get the board to jump into the program loading mode. (If you are having trouble, just keep trying, you will eventually get it.) It would have been nice to implement the reset following the Arduino model.
2. The "hookup guide" only details how to get the BLEPeripheral library functional, but that does not help if you need to run the board as a "central" role. So, I can't directly port my application to this board without some serious extra work.
3. As others have mentioned, the 3.3V regulator has a max input voltage of 6V. In my case, this makes powering the board a challenge, as the BLE Nano V2 could handle up to 13V on the VIN line.

I am hopeful that I can find a way to port my BLE central application to this board, but I was disappointed that the hookup guide ignores the "central" role that this board is capable of.

I needed a Bluetooth LE device that was compatible with the Arduino GUI. Well based on my reading this was the best choice for low power and Arduino interface support.

However, my project is for a Bluetooth device in Central mode not in Peripheral/Server mode. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a suitable nRF52832 Arduino library for Central mode. AdaFruit nRF52 libraries appear to support Central mode but are only available for their devices. Unless there is a hidden Central mode library out there; this project is at a stand still.

So I am back where I started, uncertain how to accomplish my project in the Arduino GUI.

I look forward to putting the SparkFun nRF52832 to use in a different project... Some day.

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The nRF52832 is a very robust chip, and this breakout board makes it extremely easy to get started prototyping with it. It's got a nice set of features, and of course - excellent Sparkfun documentation!

The serial boot loader does not really work. I could use it to program the chip once, but after that, the button press procedure no longer works. I biught the Nordic developlment kit as external programmer, but I would have preferred not to be mislead by the mentioning of an internal boot loader as it is not useful for repeated programming during development.