nRF Connect SDK Essential

Software development kit for building IoT products with Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, cellular IoT, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, Zigbee, Matter and more

nRF Connect SDK is a unified and flexible software development kit for building products based on all of Nordic’s nRF54, nRF53, nRF52, nRF70 and nRF91 Series wireless devices. It offers a framework for developing low-power and secure IoT devices that can scale from simple implementations for constrained devices and use cases, to the most feature-rich and sophisticated applications.

It is based on the open source Zephyr project combined with Nordic proprietary software, offered as a single package optimized for Nordic’s portfolio of wireless products. This powerful and comprehensive blend provides developers with a breadth and depth of functionality available out of the box: samples, wireless stacks, networking protocols, drivers, security, and much more. This ensures that developers can focus their time and energy where it matters most, in adding value and differentiation to their application.

The nRF Connect SDK can be extended via Add-ons that provide additional components contributed by both Nordic as well as partners. Add-ons can provide a variety of functionality, from applications, samples, protocols or more complete SDKs for specific technologies and use cases.

In parallel with Zephyr-RTOS based application development, there is the additional nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option for developing simple Bluetooth LE applications on the nRF54L Series, that do not benefit from an RTOS or advanced features. This offers developers additional flexibility to choose the software development approach that better fits their use case.

The nRF Connect SDK is supported by Nordic’s extensive and industry-leading suite of development tools, including nRF Connect for Desktop, nRF Connect for Mobile, and nRF Connect for VSCode that offers a full-fledged IDE environment to develop your next breakthrough IoT application on Nordic hardware and software.

To onboard developers on nRF Connect SDK as quickly as possible and accelerate their learning curve, Nordic offers online interactive courses through the Nordic Developer Academy, covering a variety of topics and including hands-on exercises.

Documentation
Install and Get started
nRF Connect SDK Fundamentals Course

Get started

To ease onboarding, and accelerate your learning curve with nRF Connect SDK, our Nordic Developer Academy includes free hands-on online courses that will take you from the early stages of setting up the SDK and development environment, to developing your first IoT applications on Nordic's portfolio of wireless products and technologies.

These courses have enrolled more than 16,000 developers, have received an average rating of 9.1/10, and provide more than 50 hours of in-depth training. Hundreds of nRF Connect SDK-based products have already been brought to market, and we receive positive feedback from adopters.

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We also offer a developer-oriented, hands-on tutorial video series, which will help you get started quickly with application development in nRF Connect SDK. This video series is based on selected lessons from Developer Academy with the key topics. You will learn how to build a simple Bluetooth Low Energy application step by step, starting with adding both simulated and real sensors and retrieving their data wirelessly through Bluetooth LE. We will then dive into topics such as storing data permanently on non-volatile memory, power optimization, PPK2, and finally, how to add FOTA (DFU) over Bluetooth LE (BLE).

nRF Connect SDK hands-on

Video series

Full playlist

Rapid prototyping with nRF Connect SDK

Sensors in nRF Connect SDK

Send and receive data through Bluetooth LE

Storing data on non-volatile memory

Power Optimization and the PPK2

Adding FOTA over Bluetooth LE