SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

joar@nofence — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 06:35:24 GMT

Great, thank you! That seems to have resolved the issue. Setting CONFIG_COUNTER=n appears to prevent the SoftDevice from asserting in our application. And yes, in general, just enabling CONFIG_COUNTER=y in the Bluetooth Central sample causes the SoftDevice to assert.

It might be beneficial to include a build-time warning or error when this configuration combination is detected, to help avoid similar issues in the future.

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

Sigurd — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:55:15 GMT

Hi!

[quote userid="140894" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/120144/softdevice-with-zephyr-scanning-extended-advertisement-packets-crash-the-application/530444"]here are the .config and .dts file of our application.[/quote]

We had a look again at these files, and we see these configs:

CONFIG_COUNTER=y
CONFIG_COUNTER_NRF_RTC=y
CONFIG_COUNTER_RTC_CUSTOM_TOP_SUPPORT=y

Could you try setting these to n , and see if that impacts the issue ?

hypothesis: It could be that the IRQ handler for MPSL were overwritten by this counter driver: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/blob/eacfed3332af6f473c97b6888594ea9d74e0149f/drivers/counter/counter_nrfx_rtc.c#L696-L753

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

joar@nofence — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 12:55:11 GMT

I’ll give this a try tomorrow. In the meantime, if you’re able to share any additional documentation on SoftDevice error codes, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

Sigurd — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 12:46:57 GMT

Hi!

We are not able to reproduce the issue.

[quote userid="140894" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/120144/softdevice-with-zephyr-scanning-extended-advertisement-packets-crash-the-application/529925"]Flashed the Bluetooth central example that you suggested an enabled CONFIG_BT_EXT_ADV=y together with BLE logging over RTT. This example works, in other words I don't see that we are crashing.[/quote]

Since the scanner example works, then it indicates that there is something in your application which makes it behave differently than the simple scanning application, and triggers the issue.

Are you able to provide a stripped down example application which can reproduce the issue? Maybe this can be done by modifying the scanner sample ?

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

joar@nofence — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 11:50:39 GMT

Hi Sigurd (@sigurdon),

Just checking in—are there any updates on this?

Also, are the error codes from the closed-source SoftDevice documented anywhere?
Specifically, do we know where the SoftDevice Controller ASSERT: 50 originates from?

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

erlendhestnes92 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 11:59:57 GMT

Thanks for getting back, here are the .config and .dts file of our application.

Best regards,
Erlend
devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../_5F00_dts_5F00_and_5F00_config.zip

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

Sigurd — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 10:29:45 GMT

Hi!

Could you post the compiled .overlay and .config files for your application?

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

erlendhestnes92 — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 08:40:37 GMT

Hi Sigurd,

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the late reply from our side. We also want to understand this issue better as setting the CONFIG_MPSL_USE_EXTERNAL_CLOCK_CONTROL=y seems to be a bit of magical solution to this problem as we're afraid that something on our side is not correctly configured. I therefore now tried as you suggested:

1) Flashed the Bluetooth central example that you suggested an enabled CONFIG_BT_EXT_ADV=y together with BLE logging over RTT. This example works, in other words I don't see that we are crashing. And for reference, using our application with CONFIG_MPSL_USE_EXTERNAL_CLOCK_CONTROL=n makes our application crash in the same fashion as described above.

2) We are not using the radio directly, only through the Bluetooth API. Neither are we RTC0 for something (it's only set to okay in our DTS), nor are we knowingly interacting with clocks or disabling interrupts for long period of time.

3) We are not doing anything with the clocks

Do you have any more suggestions for us to try?

Best regards,
Erlend

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

Sigurd — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:18:40 GMT

The feedback from the SoftDevice Controller team is that using CONFIG_MPSL_USE_EXTERNAL_CLOCK_CONTROL=y should really not affect this bug, but it is hinting towards that you maybe are managing clocks in a strange way.

1) Could you provide a minimal sample which can reproduce the issue?

For example, can you reproduce the bug with https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/blob/main/samples/bluetooth/central/src/main.c with CONFIG_BT_EXT_ADV=y?

2) Are you doing anything else than scanning? E.g. are you using RTC0, using the radio directly somehow (apart from through the Bluetooth API), interacting with clocks or disabling interrupts for a long period of time?

3) If you are doing something with clocks in your app, could you post what you are doing?

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

Paul from Nofence — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 07:22:53 GMT

Hi,
Thank you, but we may have found the solution : adding CONFIG_MPSL_USE_EXTERNAL_CLOCK_CONTROL=y in the prj.conf.

RE: SoftDevice with Zephyr : Scanning extended advertisement packets crash the application

Sigurd — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 23:37:31 GMT

Hi!

I'm checking with our SoftDevice Controller team what the reason for these asserts could be.