S132 serialisation command sequences

[Frederik]

Hi, I'm evaluating a nRF52 as ble central - controlled from a windows pc.

Searching the forum I just found:

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

Those threads normaly end with - nordic doesnt support HCI,... use something like NimBLE,...

But what I'm really searching for is a documentation for the serialisation interface used by the pc-ble-driver since I have to port it to C#.

Other companies like TI provide tools wich output the command sequence as byte-code (e.g. BTool). Even nRFConnect 2.1.0. I sadly can't see what's going on behind the curtain. I also found there is something like "Master Control Panel" wich is capable of showing a logfile wich at least showes the issued "HCI commands" (sadly not as bytecode) - but it just seems to be for the nRF51 - so where do I find that for the nRF52?

regards

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

The documentation of the BLE serialization can be found in the SDK documentation. Note that some changes are required to make the firmware compatible with pc-ble-driver.

You can find log files for nRF Connect in %appdata%\nrfconnect\ (on Windows). This mostly shows the BLE events, so I don't know if this is what you are looking for. Note that pc-ble-driver is also available in source code on GitHub, and you can browse the code to see the implementation.

Best regards,

Jørgen

[Frederik]

Hi thanks Jorgen, the logfiles are quite helpfull - but it seems the bytecodes are not complete are they (e.g. ACK doesn't have any)?

Btw. where can I find documentation on the handshaking needed for the pc-ble-driver? I've been reading somewhere that HW handshaking is disabled so the JSegger will enable it. Also from the ACK in the logfiles it seems there is some SW handshaking. Can it be disabled? From my observations the controler resets each time I set a breakpoint to debug the pc-ble-code heartrate code - so I suspect it's cause of missing the missing ACK from the driver?

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

It use the UART HCI protocol, documented here. The default connectivity firmware for latest nRF Connect does not use HW flow control for the UART interface. It is not possible to change this without rewriting the pc-ble-driver code.

[Frederik]

What about the SW handshaking? ACKs,...

Is it true about the JSegger? Cause I see HW handshaking is actually disabled in pc-ble-driver (SD_RPC_FLOW_CONTROL_NONE)

thanks

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

I see that nRF Connect have switched to not using HW Flow control for the UART interface. I will update my above comment. Software handshaking is part of the HCI protocol, described in the above linked documentation.