NRFICE is a dongle-free Bluetooth FPGA board in an Arduino Uno form factor. It combines the dual-core Bluetooth SoC nRF5340 with the Lattice ICE40UP5K FPGA to simplify development of edge computing and IoT products. Built in J-Link programming and debugging means no emulator dongles to buy or carry around, including for commercial use. The open source Android app allows loading of nRF and ICE40 projects over Bluetooth out of the box. The NRFICE’s form factor supports 3.3 V shields and has a beefy 5 V power supply on board (9 - 12 V wall-wart input) to supply shield/daughter boards with plenty of power for LED lighting, motor controllers, etc.

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 production chip set.

Development tool chains for embedded systems can be costly and cumbersome. Fortunately, Segger Embedded Studio is free to Nordic Semi chip users, and Lattice has made its professional FPGA development tool, Radiant, free for the ICE40 family. This means professional grade development tools are ready to go for NRFICE at no cost to you. Microsoft VS Code is also free and supported by the nRF-Connect plugin. Example projects exercising every feature of the nRF5340 SoC are a few clicks away.

From Networking to Cryptography

Any idea requiring mobile device connectivity is appropriate for the NRFICE board as a base, in particular, if FPGA performance is needed. Existing example projects for nRF5340 include Central, Peripheral, and HIDS Bluetooth LE 5 roles, Bluetooth 5 mesh networking, near field communication such as pairing to smart cards and implanted chips, direction finding and distance measurement using Bluetooth radio, and cryptographic capabilities: AES CBC/CCM/CTR/GCM, ECDH, ECDSA,HKDF, HMAC, PSA TLS, RNG, RSA, SHA-256.

The Lattice ICE40UP5K FPGA has many capabilities. Reference designs from Lattice, including AI training data sets, include:

• Hand gesture detection (sensAI) - peripheral CMOS camera required
• Audio key phrase detection (sensAI) - mems microphones required
• Human presence detection (sensAI) - peripheral CMOS camera required

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 and 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 J-Link 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

J-Link 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, near field communication radio
• 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)

Comparisons

Support & Documentation

We are passionate about open source and our public GitHub repository includes our BOM, Eagle schematic and BRD files, Gerbers, sample verilog (FPGA) projects, android app source, nRF Connect projects, and a PC app that supports the device over a serial connection as an alternative to Bluetooth.

Manufacturing Plan

We work with a number of proven, vetted, PCB assemblers with which we have years of experience across many projects. The NRFICE design is complete, including all necessary manufacturing documents for a clean, low risk re-order.

Fulfillment & Logistics

After our production run is complete, we will box everything up and send it along to Crowd Supply’s fulfillment partner, Mouser Electronics, who will handle distribution to backers worldwide. You can learn more about Crowd Supply’s fulfillment service under Ordering, Paying, and Shipping in their guide.

Risks & Challenges

Because the alpha prototype of NRFICE was turnkey manufactured turnkey by one of our production suppliers, we’re confident that the re-order process is low risk. There were minor changes to the design after the prototype, but we have meticulously checked them and implemented them as reworks on our existing boards. We do not face the risk of prohibitive re-spin costs, and the project is well financed. In the unlikely event that the end product has a flaw, the delay would be approximately four weeks. But again, we do not expect any issues. We are dedicated to 100% customer satisfaction and will take any steps necessary to deliver a flawless board as quickly as possible.