BLE: Review of development kits from Texas Instruments and Nordic Semiconductors

I “desk” tested the following two development kits to start my exploration of the BLE technology as I work on my IOT stuff in parallel:

• CC2541 Mini Development Kit Quick Start Guide ($99, postage included, direct from Texas Instruments, Amazon costs more)
• Bluetooth/802.15.1 Development Tools NRF8001 DEV KIT ($99 from Mouser, which is a great source of parts and solid delivery, but postage is extra)

After working  through both of the documents and websites for both, and the Texas Instruments (TI) delivered a working C# application, with lot’s of classes and so forth.  The TI CC2541 keyfob paired with my Lenovo Windows 8.1 machine with no problems, and stayed paired even after I turned the system off.  The C# program worked first time with the paired keyfob.  The $99 USD included a programmer which I will be exploring later in the week.

The Nordic 8001 documentation, on the other hand, did not yield a nice start-up process, but the kit did come with some interesting configurations, including an Arduino shield.  After a few hours I got bored and moved on to the TI CC2541.

Conclusion:

TI’s CC2514 is the better of the two BLE toolkits, although I will likely revisit the Nordic Arduino device in the future.