BLE 3 Click

Built-in RTC saves additional energy

Low energy consumption desingned for IoT and smart devices

Power saving modes

Specifications

Display

Also known as Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE is intended for small smart devices like home automation sensor and fitness applications that need to have really low power consumption and long battery life. The BLE 3 click communicates with the target board MCU through the UART, SPI and I2C interface, with the addition of 7 GPIO pins. It uses 3.3V power supply only.

The NINA-B1 module has different power saving modes to conserve battery life – standby mode and power off mode. The module usually spends most of the time in power off mode (it is the primary mode) and wakes up to send small packages of data, and then powers off again. The following events can be used to bring the module out of standby-mode:

• External wake-up event
• RTC event
• Analog or digital sensor event (programmable voltage level or edge detection)

During standby mode, the module is clocked at 32 kHz reference clock, which is generated by an internal 32 kHz oscillator.

The module is fully Bluetooth qualified and provides global modular approval. The ADC can sample up to 200 kHz using different inputs as sample triggers and it supports 8/10/12 bit resolution. Any of the 8 analog inputs can be used both as single-ended inputs and as differential pairs for measuring the voltage across them. The ADC supports full 0 V to VCC input range.

The NINA-B112 modules have an integrated antenna mounted on the PCB (10.0 x 14.0 mm). The RF signal pin is not connected to any signal path. You can configure NINA-B1 modules through U-Blox S-Center toolbox software using AT commands. The s-center evaluation software is available free of charge and can be downloaded from the U-Blox website.

Pinout diagram

This table shows how the pinout on BLE 3 click ccorresponds to the pinout on the mikroBUS™ socket (the latter shown in the two middle columns).

Notes	Pin					Pin	Notes
	NC	1	AN	PWM	16	NC
Active-high Reset pin	RST	2	RST	INT	15	RTS	UART request to send
UART clear to send	CS/CTS	3	CS	RX	14	TX
	SPI0 SCLK	4	SCK	TX	13	RX
	SPI0 MISO	5	MISO	SCL	12	SCL
	SPI0 MOSI	6	MOSI	SDA	11	SDA
Power supply	+3.3V	7	+3.3V	+5V	10	NC
Ground	GND	8	GND	GND	9	GND	Ground

The board also has an additional pinout with 7 GPIOs:

Programming

The demo code available on Libstock sets up the BLE 3 click to broadcast the state of pins on a desired port. A smartphone and BLE 3 can communicate when a connection is established, and the smartphone can chage the state of the pins over bluetooth low energy.

Code examples for BLE 3 click, written for MikroElektronika hardware and compilers are available on Libstock

Software Support

We provide a library for the BLE 3 Click as well as a demo application (example), developed using MikroElektronika compilers. The demo can run on all the main MikroElektronika development boards.

Package can be downloaded/installed directly form compilers IDE(recommended way), or downloaded from our LibStock™, or found on mikroE github account.

Library Description

This library contains API for BLE 3 Click driver.

Key functions:

• void ble3_cfg_setup ( ble3_cfg_t *cfg ); – Config Object Initialization function.
• BLE3_RETVAL ble3_init ( ble3_t *ctx, ble3_cfg_t *cfg ); – Initialization function.

Examples description

This example reads and processes data from BLE 3 clicks.

    void application_task ( void )
    {
        ble3_process(  );
    } 

The full application code, and ready to use projects can be installed directly form compilers IDE(recommneded) or found on LibStock™ page or mikroE GitHub accaunt.

Other mikroE Libraries used in the example:

• MikroSDK.Board
• MikroSDK.Log
• Click.Ble3

Additional notes and informations

Depending on the development board you are using, you may need USB UART click, USB UART 2 click or RS232 click to connect to your PC, for development systems with no UART to USB interface available on the board. The terminal available in all MikroElektronika compilers, or any other terminal application of your choice, can be used to read the message.

mikroSDK

This Click board™ is supported with mikroSDK – MikroElektronika Software Development Kit. To ensure proper operation of mikroSDK compliant Click board™ demo applications, mikroSDK should be downloaded from the LibStock and installed for the compiler you are using.

For more information about mikroSDK, visit the official page.