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Bluetooth Low Energy: Peripheral HIDS keyboard

Overview

The BLE Peripheral HIDS keyboard sample demonstrates how to use the GATT Human Interface Device (HID) Service to implement a keyboard input device that you can connect to your computer.

Requirements

Before you start, check that you have the required hardware and software:

  • 1x nRF52840 Connect Kit
  • 1x USB-C Cable
  • A computer running macOS, Linux, or Windows 7 or newer, with Bluetooth LE supported

Building the sample

Before you start building, remember to set up the environment first.

Use the following steps to build the BLE Peripheral HIDS keyboard sample on the command line.

  1. Open a terminal window.

  2. Go to my-workspace/ncs-playground directory created in the Setting up the environment section.

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    cd my-workspace/ncs-playground

  3. Build the sample using the west command, specifying the board (following the -b option) as connectkit_nrf52840:

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    west build -p always -b connectkit_nrf52840 samples/ble/peripheral_hids_keyboard

    Tip

    The -p always option forces a pristine build, and is recommended for new users. Users may also use the -p auto option, which will use heuristics to determine if a pristine build is required, such as when building another sample.

  4. After running the west build command, the build files can be found in build/zephyr.

Flashing the firmware

The sample is designed to work with the UF2 Bootloader, so that you can easily flash the sample using the UF2 Bootloader. The firmware can be found in build/zephyr with the name zephyr.uf2.

To flash the firmware, complete the following steps:

  1. Push and hold the USER button and plug your board into the USB port of your computer. Release the USER button after your board is connected. The RGB LED turns green.

  2. It will mount as a Mass Storage Device called UF2BOOT.

  3. Drag and drop zephyr.uf2 onto the UF2BOOT volume. The RGB LED blinks red fast during flashing.

  4. Reset the board and the sample will start running.

Testing

After flashing the firmware to your board, complete the following steps to test it:

  1. Power up nRF52840 Connect Kit by using the USB-C Cable.
  2. On your computer, search for Bluetooth devices and connect to the device named Nordic_HIDS_keyboard.
  3. When pairing, press USER button to confirm the passkey value.
  4. Open a text editor, repeatedly press USER button on the board. Every button press sends one character of the test message hello (the test message includes a carriage return) to the computer, and this will be displayed in the text editor.