Trouble getting BLE peripheral ad example running under nrfConnect

RE: Trouble getting BLE peripheral ad example running under nrfConnect

Elfving — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 13:40:11 GMT

[quote user="rtisys"]Maybe that's no longer correct?? Sorry for the lengthy reply here;[/quote]

No problem, but no it is no longer correct. In NCS that should be included by default.

Though as I now see in your newest reply you've already figured this out. Too bad that you had a hard time getting the right result from the android app though.

Having flashed the peripheral sample to a DK, and using the "nRF Connect" application, you should be able to see it there. Though you might have to add a filter for signal strength.

Regards,

Elfving

RE: Trouble getting BLE peripheral ad example running under nrfConnect

rtisys — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 10:31:40 GMT

I have more info on this issue and, although it appears to be resolved, have included some text here for others

that may find it useful.

Dug into the tutorials a bit more and found some interesting Nordic Youtube videos focused on nrfConnect SDK.

Long story short, my problem appears to be using the Nordic Android Blue Tooth monitoring app. I didn't see any

advertisements for any of the apps I was running on either Nordic platform (nrf52840DK and nrf52840_dongle). When I

switched to another vendor's Android BLE sniffer, ads showed up and I could make connections, etc.

I'm sure the Nordic Android app works fine; but couldn't find much by way of examples and an empty screen

sure looked like the code was not executing properly. My bad.

You were right about softdevices being loaded by nrfConnect SDK automatically. I found the web page that

claimed otherwise and it referred to the older SDK programming environment. Googling for info on this issue

turned up a mixture of info on both the old build environment as well as the new zephyr/nrfConnect SDK

environment that sent me down the wrong track. Will be more careful from here out.

Thanks again.

RE: Trouble getting BLE peripheral ad example running under nrfConnect

rtisys — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 20:56:29 GMT

Thanks for your quick reply...I understand about being short staffed over the holidays. Just trying to make some

progress during the "quiet time: between the holidays. Will take your advice and go through the online tutorial...

been through it quickly once, but will be a bit more through on the second pass. Let me just mention a few things

for clarity.

- I have built and run Blinky using the nrf Connect SDK. It runs as expected on both the nrf52840DK board and

the nrf52840 dongle usb board. I can flash the zephyr.hex file onto nrf52840DK board from the Visual Studio Code interface and

walk through the code using the debugger...so, at some level, things do "work". Apparently, the nrf52840 dongle board

cannot be flashed from Visual Studio Code and requires the Programmer tool started from the nrf Connect

for Desktop app. So, that's what I have used for the usb dongle. Blinky also runs correctly on that platform.

From what I have read, debugging on that platform is not possible - not a problem.

- I then create a new application (in Visual Studio Code) and select the "periodic_adv" sample code and

follow the above process of building and flashing. In both cases, I select the appropriate nrf board when I

am creating the zephyr application build environment. After building for both platforms, the respective flash loaders indicate

successful load of the "zephyr.hex" file...but no ads appear then I use the Nordic Android Blue Tooth sniffing

program.

I found a note "somewhere" on the nordic site (DevZone?) that claimed the softdevice binary was not included in the

application .hex file at build time and they gave some instructions on how to separately flash it onto the platform so it would

be available when the actual app was subsequently loaded. Maybe that's no longer correct?? Sorry for the lengthy reply here;

but I wanted to as clear as possible about what I'm seeing.......Clearly, this stuff does work - but I don't have the right picture

about how the parts fit together. Will run through the tutorials more carefully....thanks.

Happy (remainder of the) hollidays.

RE: Trouble getting BLE peripheral ad example running under nrfConnect

Elfving — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 14:04:52 GMT

Hello,

[quote user=""]

I can build and flash BLE apps, like "periodic_adv "from the nrfConnect tool. But they do not run.

[/quote]

What do you mean by nRF Connect Tool?

[quote user=""]

Been reading as much as I can and realize that, with Zephyr, I need to get the softdevice loaded

[/quote]

Not really, Zephyr and NCS should load that up for you. Which is why you can not find any particular softdevice file for NCS. In NCS there is the softdevice controller, which there are essentially 3 versions of.

[quote user=""] But they do not run.[/quote]

There might be mutliple things at fault here, but I would recommend you to simply start off following along the NCS fundementals course which you can find here. It should show you how to get something like Blinky working.

For more than that I got to say that we are severely understaffed this week because of the Christmas holidays, and I will have to get back to you on this when I have the time, which might be next week. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards and happy holidays,

Elfving