Thingy91 LTE BLE Gateway Sample not working

[Caperino]

Hello everyone!

I am rather new to firmware development with Nordic products and am experiencing some trouble with the Thingy91 LTE BLE Gateway sample.

What is the problem?

I am trying to flash the sample onto the Thingy91 (via a Debugger and the SWD connector), but there are 2 issues:

• no LTE connection can be established wiuth the NRF Cloud
• the LPUART sample on the nrf52840 is not detected properly by the nrf9160

As a result, it is stuck in the connection establishment process to the cloud, as described below.

LTE Issue

It is precisely stuck in this state:

• LED 4 blinking: The device is connecting to nRF Cloud.

Apparently it tries to connect to a seemingly random port and not 8883 for MQTT.
The antenna itself is fine though and the asset_tracker_v2 firmware works as well.

BLE Issue

The nrf9160 does not detect the lpuart firmware on the nrf52840 and logs an error similar to:

"could not detect bluetooth core"

I have no idea how to resolve this problem.

Equipment / Config

As required by the sample I do have a JLink Debugger to flash the chips directly and am using the VS Code extension to do so.
The board config is respectively set to thingy91/nrf9160/ns and thingy91/nrf52840.

I am grateful for all ideas / help and happy to supply more details!

Kind regards,
TK

[dejans]

Hi,

Which applications have you flashed on nrf9160 and what on nrf52840?

Which NCS version do you use?

Can you show complete error logs?

Best regards,
Dejan

[Caperino]

Hi Dejan,

thanks for your reply.

Applications:
lte_ble_gateway on the nrf9160
hci_lpuart on the nrf52840

I am using the nRF Connect SDK v2.9.0

Here is the log from the nrf9160:

00> *** Booting nRF Connect SDK v2.9.0-7787b2649840 ***
00> *** Using Zephyr OS v3.7.99-1f8f3dc29142 ***
00> [00:00:00.255,737] <inf> lte_ble_gw: LTE Sensor Gateway sample started
00> [00:00:00.255,920] <inf> lte_ble_gw: Initializing Bluetooth..
00> [00:00:00.255,920] <err> bt_hci_core: No HCI driver registered
00> [00:00:00.255,950] <err> lte_ble_gw: Bluetooth init failed (err -19)
00> [00:00:00.495,605] <inf> lte_ble_gw: Establishing LTE link (this may take some time) ...
00> [00:00:01.942,260] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:01.942,352] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:03.677,307] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:03.677,429] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:05.393,615] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:05.393,737] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:06.355,316] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Device ID: nrf-<MY-ID>
00> [00:00:06.355,743] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: IMEI:      <MY-ID>
00> [00:00:06.356,201] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Modem FW:  mfw_nrf9160_1.3.5
00> [00:00:06.356,231] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Protocol:          MQTT
00> [00:00:06.356,262] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Download protocol: HTTPS
00> [00:00:06.356,292] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Sec tag:           <NUMERIC-SEC-TAG>
00> [00:00:06.356,323] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Host name:         mqtt.nrfcloud.com
00> [00:00:06.622,955] <err> nrf_cloud_transport: Could not connect to nRF Cloud MQTT Broker mqtt.nrfcloud.com, port: 45858. err: -111
00> [00:00:07.103,759] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:07.103,851] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:08.825,286] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:08.825,408] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:10.558,349] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:10.558,441] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:12.238,342] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:12.238,464] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4
00> [00:00:13.951,049] <wrn> lpuart: req pin low when expected high
00> [00:00:13.951,171] <err> lpuart: Empty receiver state:4

Logs from the nrf52840:

00> [00:00:00.000,366] <wrn> swdp: cpu_clock 64000000, delay 10
00> *** Booting nRF Connect SDK v2.9.0-7787b2649840 ***
00> *** Using Zephyr OS v3.7.99-1f8f3dc29142 ***
00> [00:00:00.000,457] <inf> usb_msc: Sect Count 128
00> [00:00:00.000,488] <inf> usb_msc: Memory Size 65536
00> [00:00:00.001,007] <inf> bt_sdc_hci_driver: SoftDevice Controller build revision:
00> 2d 79 a1 c8 6a 40 b7 3c f6 74 f9 0b 22 d3 c4 80 |-y..j@.< .t.."...
00> 74 72 82 ba |tr..
00> [00:00:00.006,988] <inf> bt_hci_core: HW Platform: Nordic Semiconductor (0x0002)
00> [00:00:00.007,019] <inf> bt_hci_core: HW Variant: nRF52x (0x0002)
00> [00:00:00.007,049] <inf> bt_hci_core: Firmware: Standard Bluetooth controller (0x00) Version 45.41337 Build 3074452168
00> [00:00:00.008,331] <inf> bt_hci_core: Identity: E1:3F:5F:D9:40:ED (random)


Thank you for your time.

Best,
TK

[dejans]

Hi TK,

I suggest that you switch to previous NCS v2.8.0 and make following changes to the samples:
changes to lte_ble_gateway sample

--- a/samples/cellular/lte_ble_gateway/boards/nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns.overlay
+++ b/samples/cellular/lte_ble_gateway/boards/nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns.overlay
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
/ {
        chosen {
                zephyr,bt-uart=&lpuart;
+               zephyr,bt-hci = &bt_hci_uart;
        };
};

@@ -23,6 +24,11 @@
                status = "okay";
                req-pin = <21>; /* <&interface_to_nrf52840 3 0>; */
                rdy-pin = <19>; /* <&interface_to_nrf52840 2 0>; */
+
+               bt_hci_uart: bt_hci_uart {
+                       compatible = "zephyr,bt-hci-uart";
+                       status = "okay";
+               };
        };
};

diff --git a/samples/cellular/lte_ble_gateway/prj.conf b/samples/cellular/lte_ble_gateway/prj.conf
index ad2bfa98cf..59e09b386a 100644
--- a/samples/cellular/lte_ble_gateway/prj.conf
+++ b/samples/cellular/lte_ble_gateway/prj.conf
@@ -53,6 +53,8 @@ CONFIG_CONSOLE_GETCHAR=y
# Enable Bluetooth stack and libraries
CONFIG_BT=y
CONFIG_BT_H4=y
+CONFIG_BT_HCI=y
+CONFIG_BT_CTLR=n
CONFIG_BT_WAIT_NOP=y
 

changes to hci_lpuart sample
- no changes are needed for sample from NCS v2.7.0
- remove disable-rx from the sample's devicetree overlay for UART0 for sample in NCS v2.8.0
- alternatively, for NCS v2.8.0, apply changes from this pull request

Best regards,
Dejan

[Caperino]

Hi Dejan,

thanks for your input!

I switched to the NCS v2.8.0 for both samples:

BLE is now detected properly by the nrf9160, the empty receiver state only occurs once before logging "Bluetooth ready" and "Scanning...", so it overcomes that problem !

To build both samples, I have applied your changes to the overlay files of the thingy91/... instead of nrf9160dk/..., and disabled sysbuild for both scenarios as I couldn't build the nrf52840 sample with it being active.

Nonetheless, I still experience the nRF Cloud connectivity error as described below:

00> [00:00:06.355,316] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Device ID: nrf-<MY-ID>
00> [00:00:06.355,743] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: IMEI:      <MY-ID>
00> [00:00:06.356,201] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Modem FW:  mfw_nrf9160_1.3.5
00> [00:00:06.356,231] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Protocol:          MQTT
00> [00:00:06.356,262] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Download protocol: HTTPS
00> [00:00:06.356,292] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Sec tag:           <NUMERIC-SEC-TAG>
00> [00:00:06.356,323] <inf> nrf_cloud_info: Host name:         mqtt.nrfcloud.com
00> [00:00:06.622,955] <err> nrf_cloud_transport: Could not connect to nRF Cloud MQTT Broker mqtt.nrfcloud.com, port: 45858. err: -111

Do you have any ideas what is going on here? As I would like to switch to a custom MQTT endpoint later on, maybe that is worth trying already? I do not know how to accomplish connecting to my own MQTT broker, though.

Anyway, thanks for your effort once again! :)

Best,
TK

[dejans]

Hi,

This could be a certificate related problem. You can look at this troubleshooting guide and this quick start guide.

Best regards,
Dejan