Omnimo nRF52840 Seamlessly Integrates with Feather, Qwiic, mikroBUS, and Pmod Add-Ons

A small hardware team focused on IoT device development named eAFAQ has introduced a dev board focusing on expandability. Omnimo nRF52840 is a small board that combines a Nordic nRF52 SoC, BLE, Thread, and a diverse set of ports for add-on boards, making it a fantastic option for IoT prototyping and integration with automation systems like Home Assistant.

The Omnimo nRF52840 packs the connectivity typically found in larger development kits into a compact board that appears slightly larger than an Adafruit Feather form factor. Plus, it includes two programmable push buttons and LEDs.

The microcontroller is a Nordic nRF52840 SoC. This SoC contains a 64 MHz Arm Cortex-M4 MCU Core with a floating point unit, 1 MB Flash, and 256 Kilobytes of RAM. Its 2.4 GHz radio supports Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, and Zigbee. Omnimo nRF52840 adds a 2 MB flash with an external QSPI chip. Twenty-six GPIOs break out into four distinctive socket types.

The Omnimo nRF52840's unique stand-out feature is the pin headers and sockets. They support boards from Adafruit's Feather Wing, mikroBUS Click, and Digilent's Pmod ecosystems, making it a versatile choice for developers. Additionally, it includes a Qwiic / Stemma QT header that supports the Grove through an adapter. Like the Adafruit Feather Boards, Omnimo nRF52840 has a header for LiPo batteries and an onboard battery charging controller.

Two hardware features enable power saving beyond the already energy-efficient Nordic nRF52. One is a physical on/off switch, allowing for a hard cut-off. The other is an LDO regulator dedicated to powering external modules, which can power those down when they are not needed--like during the microcontroller's sleep states.

Nordic's nRF52 SoCs have broad programming support. You can use Omnimo nRF52840 with the Arduino IDE, CircuitPython, and Nordic nRF Connect SDK. The USB-C port works great with CircuitPython by making the Omnimo nRF52840 appear as a mass storage device on a host PC. CircuitPython can store files on the external QSPI flash, providing plenty of room for user code. The built-in debug port allows seamless integration into Nordic's Connect SDK with an external programmer.

Omnimo nRF52840 is a fully open source project, and eAFAQ intends to release design files and coding examples at the end of the funding campaign. Visit the Omnimo nRF52840 Crowd Supply campaign page to learn more and subscribe to an alert when the board becomes available for pre-order.