connected devices sidebar view "vanished"

[KentH]

I can't get my connected devices sidebar view back. I see several people asking how to devices to show up in the view, but my problem is no view at all. I have attached a screen-grab of the bottom left hand corner where it used to be. I have clicked on an one of the other views to show the pop-up options, none of which are "connected devices". At present there are two nRF52840 DKs connected (testing communications between them). Used to be able to select the kit, pop up the virtual console, reboot, etc. But now no view at all.

I read thru other comments. Deleted the nordic extensions, used the tool-kit manager to reinstall them -- without luck. Deleted $(HOME)/.vscode & reinstalled a bunch of extensions with no luck. Really nice feature in constant use. ????

On a M1 Mac with latest version of everything (Feb 2024).

[Simonr]

Hi

I will have to report this to the VS code extension developers as I'm not able to reproduce this on my end. Do you have any details on what happened/ caused the Connected Devices bar to disappear. Also, have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling VS Code altogether from your computer?

I'll come back to you when I have some ideas/ action points from our devs. Thank you for your patience!

Best regards,

Simon

[KentH]

• I was testing comms between two nrf52840 boards. Looking at comms on east using comms on both via connected devices  then the sidebar was gone!  Maybe I entered a keyboard command aimed at another window. Maybe it was a vs code service that decided to go rogue and run up 100g of virtual memory (which it was doing at the time). Would just like my sidebar back. I thought removing and restoring the Nordic plugins would fix it but no I had involve you

[Simonr]

Hi Kent

A few ideas from our devs to what this can be:

It could be that you unintentionally dragged the Connected Devices panel to a separate top level sidebar. If so you would see a second nRF icon in the sidebar you have drawn it. Please see the screenshot here where I have drawn it to the right side of the screen for demo purposes:

Another issue might be that the provider of that panel has failed to activate for some reason. In that case we would need generated support information, but we don't think this is very likely.  You can generate support information with this button:

 

Best regards,

Simon

UPDATE: Also, all views get a command in the command palette letting you focus on a view/tab. You can write "nRF Connect: Focus on Connected Devices View" to locate the Connected Devices tab.

[KentH]

Thanks for your suggestions. I had no luck with any of them. (example: the "Focus" options available in the command pallet are the same as in the pop-up -- ie no Connected Devices). Let me tell you about my latest attempts to clear this problem.

I tried uninstalling vscode as suggested. I used the uninstall script from the microsoft site (which did nothing), then just deleted the app from my Applications directory. I then removed the support files I could find with:

% rm -rf ~/.vscode
% find ~/Library 2> /dev/null -name "*vscode*" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

I had also been having some issues with nrf extension selecting the proper toolkit (ie nrf-connect or stock zephyr). The current project uses a nordic radio board to talk to a non-nordic controller thus requiring both SDKs in the same project. So I also deleted my entire nordic installation (for me under "/opt/nordic"). I then use the nordic toolchain manger to reinstall nrf-connect + vscode. I started a new project with the nordic "tag-reader" sample & connected a nrf5340dk + st-nfc05a1 shield to the computer.

With this fresh installation, I could build + flash the DK. But no connected devices. I started up a "Serial Terminal" from nordic toolkit which connected to the DK. Screen shots of the vscode + serial terminal windows are attached.

I generated the "support information" from the Welcome view and have attached this.

FWIW everything works as expected on my laptop (mac Monterey 12.5.1 x86). The problem in on my desktop (mac Monterey 12.6.7 M1)

I'd appreciate any suggestions. I'm sure I must have missed something in my "clean" install.

IMPORTANT: The data below could contain sensitive or confidential information about your environment.
If you do not wish this to be seen by others, please make sure to remove it before sharing.

For help and support, visit the Nordic DevZone at https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/.

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Thanks.

[Simonr]

Hi Kent

The logs here seems completely fine, and even lists the connected devices. Can you open the developer console just after VSCode is started and the extensions activated. Perhaps there is some serror or exception there that we haven't seen yet? Use the "Toggle Developer Tools" command.

Best regards,

Simon