Serial Terminal in nRF Connect for Desktop Linux version not working poolside

[Burt]

You may ask what poolside means. It means at my community pool, where I don't have Internet access via Wi-Fi for my laptop.

I wish to run some AT commands like AT%NCELLMEAS at a few locations. In particular, my house is between two cell towers: closer to one. At the house, I only see signals from the networks using the close tower. I wish to head down my street in the direction of the weaker tower and see how my results change at various points along the way. Both in Linux and Windows I cannot start the simple (but generally excellent; simple is a relative term) Serial Terminal without Wi-Fi. In Linux, if I start Serial Terminal at home where I have Internet access, but then close the lid of my laptop, putting it into standby mode, I lose the entire nRF Connect for Desktop and sub-applications when I try to resume. So, it is useless. Please fix it so that it will optionally start without an Internet connection. I do not wish to use any other terminal than Serial Terminal, because they all suck relative to Serial Terminal.

Using Windows, I haven't trekked down to the pool yet, but it appears that as long as I stick with using the same USB port that I use when I bring up Serial Terminal with Wi-Fi, I may be able to put the laptop in and out of suspend with no Wi-Fi and have a working terminal. Of course, it would be nicest if the option existed to use Serial Terminal without an Internet connection in both the Linux and Windows case.

Thank you for considering my request.

Burt Silverman

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi Burt,

I have reproduced the same on my end. The Serial Terminal requiers internet access when it starts. I have contacted the team working on this to have it addressed, but for now, that is unfortunately how it is.

[Burt]

Thank you, Einar. Also, please see if you can replicate my finding under Linux that even if you have Internet access when starting the program, but then shut off the Internet link, and then you remove the USB cable used for UART, you can crash the nrfconnect appimage program. This is significant: on Windows I can start Serial Terminal with Internet at my house and then continue to use it when I go somewhere without Internet access, but that method is not reliable with Linux.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

I did not reproduce a crach, but I see that re-connection does not work without network connectivity. 

There is a generic issue in how this is handled in nRF Connect for Desktop and the team is on it. But for this specific use case I would recomend using another terminal until the issue is resolved (my personal faviourit serial port emulator for Linux is GTKTerm which I highly recommend).

[Burt]

Thanks for the gtkterm tip, Einar. It is pretty; I wish it had that linemode that Serial Terminal has. Also, I got hung up on trying to figure out their macro capability--it seems like they never completed the implementation but left it in under configuration to cause confusion!

Burt

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

The issue should be resolved now. You need to open the app with internet connection one last time, and then nrfutil core will be updated to not require internet connection after that.

[Burt]

The Windows version is working great now.

The Linux version on my unsupported Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is a mess due to other issues. It crashes if I change the window size, or suspend--and I don't know if it is due to my too new Ubuntu. Oh, well, I hope that can be looked at or added to your Ubuntu 24.04 to do list.

Burt