NRF52832 BLE does not work.

[Sergey]

Hi, everyone. I've developed a custom board using nrf52832. I tested it and found that CPU core, GPIO and other peripherals work well, but BLE doesn't work at all. I ran two examples:

1. Simple advertiser. I don't see any devices in NRF connect scanner.
2. Simple scanner. app_error_fault_handler() is called all time. Argument values: id=1, pc=0x232ba, info=0. I use s132 3.0.0 softdevice.

I double checked all power supply and GND pins and also all external components. I don't think I have any issue with an antenna because I tested another custom device with the same antenna. It works well.

I suspect I have some layout issue, but can't understand what. I checked DEC1 pin on another working device using an oscilloscope and see constant level and small peaks with ADV period.

On my device I don't see this picture. There is constant level 1.1V. I think RF module does not works for some unknown reason.

Could you tell me any useful thoughts based on described information?

[FormerMember]

First, to find the reason why app_error_fault_handler() always is called, I would recommend you to run the chip in debug mode, step through the initialization in main(), and check if advertising is successfully started or not.

One suspect is the 32 kHz clock source. Do you have an external 32 kHz crystal on your board? The examples is the SDK are set up to use external 32 kHz crystal by default. I would recommend you the check if the LFCLK clock source is the root cause of the trouble on your board.

[Sergey]

Thank you for the response.

1. app_error_fault_handler() is called in scanner example only. No any errors occurred in init sequence in both examples.
2. I don't have 32kHz oscillator.
3. Yes, I am using LF_CLK in my test code. I also will try SYNTH clock source.
4. I tried several chips on the board. Same results.