UARTE Shell and Log compatibility

RE: UARTE Shell and Log compatibility

Charlie — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:57:24 GMT

Hi Ben,

You are right. There are some changes have been intorduced since NCS 2.8.0 to NCS 2.9.0. The following commits seems related what you have observed.

[nrf fromtree] drivers: serial: nrfx_uarte: Fix runtime PM for interr… · nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr@149a971 · GitHub

Could you have a try to with NCS 2.9.0? I will contact the driver developer if the problem still exist.

Best regards,

Charlie

RE: UARTE Shell and Log compatibility

bvyates — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:54:51 GMT

Hello,

We ultimately found that we needed to disable CONFIG_PM_DEVICE_RUNTIME in order to get the shell to work. I looked through the commit history of the Nordic UART drivers in the Zephyr repository, and did see that runtime power management logic was added to the uarte code fairly recently. That would be why our functionality broke when moving from NCS version 2.6.1 to 2.8.0 I believe.

There may be a bug in the shell UART backend then that the peripherals are not being enabled properly with the power management scheme. Maybe there is something else we are supposed to run from our application to enable power to UART hardware, but this was not necessary for other UART modules (ex logging without shell), so I suspect it is a shell backend problem.

Regardless, this seems like something that would eb useful to address in the release notes or migrations guide.

Thanks,

Ben

RE: UARTE Shell and Log compatibility

Charlie — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 13:53:28 GMT

Hi Ben,

Happy New Year! I hope you’ve made some progress since our last communication.

Based on the information you’ve shared, here are some debugging thoughts:

Example Application as a Baseline
If the example application works as expected, that’s a good sign. I recommend modifying the sample application step by step to incorporate your custom application. This approach is typical for development and even for updating to a new NCS version(when big system level changes make upgrading complicated).
Changes in NCS Versions
Moving from v2.6.1 to v2.8.0 introduces sysbuild support (starting with v2.7.0). While sysbuild includes some Sysbuild forced options, I don’t believe any of them are directly related to the issue at hand. However, you should review the build\zephyr\.config file for any potentially suspicious configurations used by all images. Keep in mind that build\app\zephyr\.config is the configuration file specifically used for your application image.
Addressing the I2C Issue
I suggest disabling the I2C feature for now to focus on resolving the primary issue. Once the main problem is addressed, you can test and verify the I2C functionality separately. If necessary, feel free to open another ticket to get dedicated support for the I2C issue.

Let me know if you need further assistance!

Best regards,

Charlie

RE: UARTE Shell and Log compatibility

bvyates — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 22:03:36 GMT

Hi Charlie,

Thank you for your response. I have also been able to get the shell and logging working in the example application, but have still not been able to get any UART activity while using the shell and UARTE in our custom application. I've combed through the generated config files for our application and the sample code, but have not seen anything missing from our file.

Since our configuration was working without issue on v2.6.1, I was trying to understand if there are any known changes from v2.6.1 to v2.8.0 relating to UART that might be the cause of our breakage.

Since my original post I have also been running into I2C issues with the nrf-twim module on the nRF54L15, whereas we were previously using nrf-twi on the nRF52840. My understanding is that nrf-twim and nrf-uarte are both the DMA driver version for their respective protocols, so maybe there is some connection there? But it might be a completely unrelated issue.

Thanks again,

Ben

RE: UARTE Shell and Log compatibility

Charlie — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:10:20 GMT

Hi Ben,

As you can see from UARTE — Universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter with EasyDMA and UART — Universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter, UART0/UARTE0 are same pheripherical using same register address, and it is enable as "nrf-uarte" compitable by default.

I did a quick check with ncs\v2.8.0\zephyr\samples\subsys\shell\shell_module sample, both shell and log modules work as expected.

*** Booting nRF Connect SDK v2.8.0-a2386bfc8401 ***
*** Using Zephyr OS v3.7.99-0bc3393fb112 ***
[00:00:00.373,443] <inf> app: Sample start to run

uart:~$
uart:~$ help
Please press the <Tab> button to see all available commands.
You can also use the <Tab> button to prompt or auto-complete all commands or its subcommands.
You can try to call commands with <-h> or <--help> parameter for more information.

Shell supports following meta-keys:
Ctrl + (a key from: abcdefklnpuw)
Alt + (a key from: bf)
Please refer to shell documentation for more details.

Available commands:
bypass : Bypass shell
clear : Clear screen.
date : Date commands
demo : Demo commands
device : Device commands
devmem : Read/write physical memory
Usage:
Read memory at address with optional width:
devmem <address> [<width>]
Write memory at address with mandatory width and value:
devmem <address> <width> <value>
dynamic : Demonstrate dynamic command usage.
help : Prints the help message.
history : Command history.
kernel : Kernel commands
log : Commands for controlling logger
log_test : Log test
rem : Ignore lines beginning with 'rem '
resize : Console gets terminal screen size or assumes default in
case the readout fails. It must be executed after each
terminal width change to ensure correct text display.
retval : Print return value of most recent command
section_cmd : Demo command using section for subcommand registration
shell : Useful, not Unix-like shell commands.
shell_uart_release : Uninitialize shell instance and release uart, start
loopback on uart. Shell instance is reinitialized when
'x' is pressed
stats : Stats commands
version : Show kernel version
uart:~$

You can find the following modification I made for testing. You can refer to this sample to check your application codes.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ncs280_5F00_shell_5F00_module.patch

Best regards,

Charlie