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  • Case ID: 348622
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feedback on BT antenna activity

ste2108

Hello,

For our emission tests in an anechoic chamber we need to be sure that the BT antenna is up and running. Of course we cannot connect via BT from outside the chamber, even though we are pretty close to our device, and our solution up to now has been to use a development board inside the chamber connected to a PC outside the chamber through a USB cable and to the device itself through BLE, and using some BLE service to ping the board. I was wondering though if there is a reliable output from the Nordic stack which would allow us to get rid of the development board, and connect instead the device itself to the PC through a USB cable in order to collect this output on the PC. A function like "IsBLEAntennaUpAndRunning" would work, to be clear Slight smile
Thank you.

Kind regards,

Stefano

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  • 0

    Hi Stefano,

    Is you device a custom board using the nRF5840 SoC?

    And right now you are connecting this custom device via BLE to the DK (which DK is it?) both which are placed within the chamber and then the DK is connected via USB to the PC on the outside. Am I correct?

    Regards,

    Priyanka

  • 0 in reply to Priyanka

    Hello Priyanka,

    SDK version is 2.8.0

    The point is that I would like to avoid connecting the device under test via BLE to a second device which is within the chamber and cabled to a PC outside the chamber, and instead cable the device under test to the PC outside the chamber and use the output of some function to check that the BLE is up and running instead. What I am asking if there is such function, which should guarantee that the BLE stack is working correctly and that I would be able to connect if a device was present in the room.

    Regards, 

  • 0 in reply to ste2108

    yes, it is a custom board using nrf52840 SOC

  • +1 in reply to ste2108

    Hi Stefano,

    I don't think there is any out of the box function as you mention, to check whether the BLE is up and running. The SDK and stack can provide status outputs such as "advertising started" or "BLE stack initialized," but these only confirm that the software is running and the radio is enabled—not that the antenna is functional or that over-the-air connectivity is possible.

    You can log BLE stack status (such as advertising or connection events) to the PC over USB, for eg, bt_enable() bt_le_adv_start() etc can be checked to see if they return successful, but there is no function in the SDK that can guarantee, without an actual RF connection, that the BLE radio and antenna are fully operational and connectable. Physical RF testing or a real connection attempt is necessary for a full verification.

    -Piyanka

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  • +1 in reply to ste2108

    Hi Stefano,

    I don't think there is any out of the box function as you mention, to check whether the BLE is up and running. The SDK and stack can provide status outputs such as "advertising started" or "BLE stack initialized," but these only confirm that the software is running and the radio is enabled—not that the antenna is functional or that over-the-air connectivity is possible.

    You can log BLE stack status (such as advertising or connection events) to the PC over USB, for eg, bt_enable() bt_le_adv_start() etc can be checked to see if they return successful, but there is no function in the SDK that can guarantee, without an actual RF connection, that the BLE radio and antenna are fully operational and connectable. Physical RF testing or a real connection attempt is necessary for a full verification.

    -Piyanka

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