Escape to Prague: A Hands-on Journey with Nordic Thingy:91x

Overview

Whether you want to build an AQI monitoring device, a temperature-sensitive alert system, a GNSS-assisted tracker, a geofencing-based notifier, or even sense motion in drones using the onboard IMU — the Nordic Thingy:91x gives you the power to do it all.

You can even go as simple as creating your own IoT button.

This board is packed with real-world capabilities like sensors, GNSS, BLE, and ultra-low power performance, making it a perfect playground for both beginners and advanced makers.

And through this workshop, you won’t just learn about these features rather you’ll actually build some of them, step by step. From blinking your first LED to reading environmental sensor's data and accessing live GPS coordinates, this workshop sets the stage for all kinds of smart, sensor-driven, and connected innovations.

Escape To Prague - The Main Highlight of the Workshop

Imagine this,You are carrying Thingy91x Board along with you from Brno during Fab25 and as you reach Prague the device will automatically notifies you without any wifi or internet. It's like creating virtual boundaries and doing some actions automatically when we cross the boundary. Sound's Exciting Right?

So that's going to be the final real-world project that we all gonna make by the end of the workshop.

About Nordic Thing-91x

Many embedded boards today are packed with advanced features, but few are as compact, powerful, and versatile as the Nordic Thingy:91x. The Nordic Thingy:91x is an advanced, all-in-one multi-sensor development kit designed by Nordic Semiconductor. Built around the nRF9151 SiP, it combines cellular IoT, GNSS, Bluetooth Low Energy, and a rich set of onboard sensors — all in a compact, battery-powered enclosure.

Key Features:

• Environmental sensors: Temperature, humidity, air pressure, and air quality (BME688)
• Motion sensing: 6-axis IMU (accelerometer + gyroscope) and magnetometer
• GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) for accurate location tracking
• Onboard RGB LED, programmable button, and buzzer for feedback and interaction
• Rechargeable battery with USB-C charging and power management
• Supports LTE-M, NB-IoT, and Bluetooth LE
• Compatible with nRF Connect SDK, nRF Cloud, and standard development tools

Whether you're prototyping a GPS tracker, an air quality logger, a motion-sensitive device, or exploring edge computing, the Thingy:91x is built to support fast, reliable development with minimal hardware setup.

Workshop Goal

By the end of the session, each participant will:

• Set up the Nordic development environment on their laptops
• Flash firmware to the Thingy:91x board
• Control the onboard RGB LED via code
• Access and display real-time sensor data
• Retrieve GNSS-based location data
• Building Projects based on things we learned till now (Automation based on Sensor's Data, Geofencing)

Now let's have a brief overview about how we have segmented the workshop and what's the outcome and learning from each segment of it

Introduction & Setup [ 20min ]

• Welcome & agenda overview
• Introduction to Nordic Semiconductor and the Thingy:91x
• Overview of onboard features: sensors, GNSS, LED, USB, BLE
• Overview about tools
• nRF Connect for Desktop
• nRF Command Line Tools
• VS Code with Nordic Extension IoT data communication.

OutCome

Participants will have all software tools installed, their board connected, and ready to build — a smooth takeoff before the adventure begins.

LED Control with Button [20 min]

This is the first practical hands-on section of the workshop, designed to give participants an immediate sense of interaction with the Nordic Thingy:91x board. By controlling the onboard RGB LED and modifying its behavior using an external button, participants will get familiar with GPIOs, digital input/output, and basic embedded logic.

• First firmware flash to the board
• Blink the onboard RGB LED
• Modify LED Color using PushButton

Outcome

Learn how to handle GPIOs, understand digital input/output, and write logic-based code — your first real interaction with embedded hardware.

Real-World Sensing with Thingy:91x [ 45 min ]

This segment focuses on leveraging the powerful onboard sensors of the Thingy:91x to collect environmental and motion data, process it locally, and optionally stream it to a mobile app over BLE. Participants will gain hands-on experience working with sensors and understand how embedded systems bridge the physical and digital world.

Overview of onboard sensors:

• Temperature, Humidity, Pressure, Gas

• Accelerometer & Gyroscope

• We will also explore how we can visualise the data on our Mobile phones via bluetooth communication.

Outcome

Participants learn to gather, interpret, and use real-time sensor data. You’ll also explore how this data can be streamed to mobile apps for wireless monitoring.

Getting Your GPS Location (GNSS) [ 30 min ]

In this segment, participants will learn how to harness the onboard GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) of the Thingy:91x to obtain their real-time geographical location. They'll understand how GNSS works, how it differs from GPS, and how to fetch live latitude/longitude coordinates. Optionally, they'll also learn to visualize GNSS data using BLE on a mobile phone.

• What is GNSS and how it's different from GPS?
• How Thingy:91x uses GNSS to get coordinates
• How to visualise GNSS data on Mobile App (BLE)

Outcome

Participants understand satellite-based tracking and can fetch and interpret their own location data with real hardware.

And later once we receive the data we can also visualise the live location on Google Maps by just providing the Latitude and Longitude

Experimenting Real Life Projects & QnA [ 35 min ]

In this final segment of the workshop, participants will explore how the knowledge they've gained—blinking LEDs, reading sensor data, accessing GNSS—can be applied to build real-world prototypes. This part aims to bridge the gap between “learning” and “building, ” giving participants a vision for what’s possible with the Nordic Thingy:91x.

Real-world applications with Nordic Thingy-91x:

• Automation Using Sensor’s Data

This is a simple automation project made using Temperature Sensor & Built-In LED where we set a threshold value of temperature and as temperature rises above it the LED changes to Green Color.

• It's Time for Escape to Prague

So this is something which I want to keep as a suspense as this is one of the most interesting application that we can make with just Nordic Thingy-91x. So think about what and how it can be done till the workshop.

Outcome

Participants leave with a practical vision of how to apply everything they've learned. They’ll walk out confident and curious — ready to build their own real-world applications.

Isn't this an exciting journey of starting everything from scratch to building our own real-life working projects? Well definitely it is and now let's learn how we can achieve all these things by looking over each and every step to be performed to make things work. Starting with the BOM.

Bill Of Materials (BOM)

To make this complete workshop beginner friendly and less complex, we just used the Nordic Thingy-91x board and no external components with.

After having your Nordic Board, it's time to follow some prerequisites that will help us to use Thingy:91x with our computer smoothly.

Prerequisites to be followed by the Participants before workshop

To make the most of this hands-on journey with the Nordic Thingy:91x, we recommend that participants complete a few simple setup steps before attending the workshop. This ensures you can follow along smoothly, focus on building exciting projects in real time, and unlock even more learning during the session.

1. Download and Install nRF Connect for Desktop

nRF Connect for Desktop is the official development environment by Nordic Semiconductor, and it acts as the central hub for working with the Thingy:91x. During the workshop, we’ll use it to:

• Detect your board when connected via USB
• Flash sample firmware to the Thingy:91x
• Access essential tools like the Programmer and Serial Terminal
• View logs, monitor sensor outputs, and interact with the board in real time

Download Link - https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-tools/nRF-Connect-for-Desktop/Download

After downloading, open up nrf connect for Desktop and instal below mentioned 3 applications

2. Download and Install Install SEGGER J-Link Drivers + nrfutil

To flash firmware and communicate with the Nordic Thingy:91x, your system needs two things:

• SEGGER J-Link drivers – for USB debug communication
• nrfutil – official command-line tool for managing Device Firmware Updates (DFU).

For downloading SEGGER J-Link drive just visit this link and download the version V8.18 (which is the recommended version) as per your operating system and after downloading just simply install it.

For nrfutil, we need to follow different steps from macOS and Windows OS. Let me show the steps for macOS

Steps for install nrfutil in macOS

> Download nrfutil executable for macOS

• Visit the official nRF Util product page and Scroll down to Downloads and choose the macOS version.

> Move nrfutil to a system $PATH location

You want to move the nrfutil executable to a directory that is already in your PATH, such as /usr/local/bin.

• First, check if /usr/local/bin exists (it usually does):

ls /usr/local/bin

> Move the nrfutil binary to that directory

sudo mv nrfutil /usr/local/bin/

• You’ll be prompted for your Mac login password. Type it and press Enter.

> Make it executable

Run the following command to give execute permission:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/nrfutil

> Verify installation

Type the following command to confirm it's properly installed:

nrfutil --version

You should see the installed version of nrfutil.

> Download nrfutil.exe

• Go to the official Nordic nRF Util product page and Scroll down to the Downloads section & Download the Windows version
• Once downloaded, you’ll find it in your Downloads folder or the folder you chose for downloads.

> Move nrfutil.exe to a folder in your system PATH

To run nrfutil from any folder using Command Prmpt, it must be placed in a directory that’s already in your system PATH (e.g., C:\Windows, C:\Program Files)

But the best and cleanest place is a custom tools folder like:

Example location: C:\nrf-tools\

Just create a new Folder named nrf-tools in you C drive and move the nrfutil.exe file into that folder

> Add the folder to System PATH (if not already)

• Press Windows Key → search for Environment VariablesClick "Edit the system environment variables"
• In the System Properties window, click Environment Variables.
• Under System Variables, scroll and find Path, then click Edit
• Click New → add the path where you placed nrfutil.exe, for example

C:\nrf-tools

• Click OK on all windows to apply.

> Verify installation

Type the following command to confirm it's properly installed:

nrfutil --version

You should see the installed version of nrfutil.

3. Download and Install VS Code and nRF Extensions

For downloading VS code, visit this link and Download the software as per you operating system.

Step 1 - As shown in the first image, goto extensions and search for "nRF Connect for VS Code Extension Pack" and install it

Step 2 - Later click on nRF Connect and click on Manage Tool Chain and in the action select "Install Tool chain"

Step 3 - Install the Tool chain version 3.0.1

Step 4 - After that again click on nRF Connect and click on Manage SDK this time and select "Install SDK"

Step 5 - Install the SDK version 3.0.0

With this you are done with all the prerequisites steps to be performed before starting the workshop.

Let's Build

1. LED Blink Code

This is the most basic example code using which we can blink the on board LED of Nordic Thingy-91x. Though it's basic but it's really important code to get started with the new board and while making it we can learn the concepts of GPIO and digital signals. Let's have a look over the video to understand more.

2. Reading Inbuilt Sensor's Data

Nordic Thingy:91x is a featured loaded board which comes with multiple builtin sensors. Out of them 1 is the BME688 which gives senses the environmental parameters like temperature, humidity etc. and give us accurate values of it. Let's go through the video to know how to read that sensor's data

Later after BME688, let's talk about another interesting sensors builtin called as BMI270 which is a 6 axis IMU that combines Accelerometer and Gyroscope which gives the data of micro motions and movements. So now let's go through it's video and learn how to read the sensor's data

3. Reading GNSS Data

Other than Sensor and LED, thingy board is equipped with powerful GNSS connectivity as well where we get to see live and accurate location of our board. This can be really useful for Asset tracking and Vehicle Tracking. So now let's go through the video and learn how to read the data.

So those were the videos about several example codes and how to flash the firmware into the board. We can further modify the codes to make interesting projects out of it.

Ending Note

This workshop was designed to give learners a solid, hands-on introduction to the Nordic Thingy:91x — not just through theory, but by building, blinking, sensing, and exploring the real-world capabilities of embedded systems. Whether you’re a student, developer, or enthusiast, I hope this session sparks new ideas and the confidence to keep building.

If selected, I’d be honoured to conduct this workshop live at Fab25 in Prague, empowering more makers around the world to take their first step into embedded innovation with Nordic tools.

And till then just Explore, Learn & Share with me techiesms 🫡