NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

abhipray — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 19:54:37 GMT

Awesome, thanks so much for sharing that. It is working really well when flow control is turned on.

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

Jakub Rzeszutko — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:15:41 GMT

I confirm there is a problem with memory handling in ring_buffer implementation. We have a fix for that and it shall be available in comming SDK14.2.

Unfortunately current UART driver will not mange such fast and big transsmissions. During UART Rx interrupt process we can loose some data or data reception synchronization (data will be badly interpreted). We have proof of concept for new UART driver but it will be released in Q1-Q2 next year.

I have an approval to share it here on devzone. It is fixing memory problem and it is handling your scenario of usage. I just tested it and it was working correctly. As I mentioned we are still working on it so we do not give any guaranty - it shall be treated as PROTOTYPE.

Here you have a hex file you can use as your playground (cmd buffer size set to 3000):nrf52832_xxaa.hex

To port it to your code:

I assume you are using SDK14.0.0
Replace cli example (sdk\nrf5\examples\peripheral\cli) in SDK14.0.0 with below one: (I attached only GCC project): cli.7z
Update SDK with attached changes: SDK update.7z

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

abhipray — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 23:14:28 GMT

I am able to send long commands now but I cannot send them fast enough. I want to send 683 bytes every 16 ms. I can successfully send that amount of data from the tx out of nRF but can't achieve the same rate in the Rx direction via the NRF_CLI-- the app either crashes with a memory management hard fault or there are dropped characters leading to undetected commands. Any ideas?

For more background, I am using a SILabs USB-UART chip, the CP2102/9 at a baudrate of 926100 and even parity. I have not been using hardware or software flow control.

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

abhipray — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 17:39:35 GMT

Thanks! I think that worked. What's the problem you foresee with flow control?

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

Jakub Rzeszutko — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 17:18:50 GMT

Please modify file: nrf_cli_types.h:

typedef uint8_t nrf_cli_cmd_len_t;

change to:

typedef uint16_t nrf_cli_cmd_len_t;

However if you will use a script to send commands you will face a problem with flow control... :/

I tested string containing ~2039 characters. It worked perfectly with RTT and some characters were lost when using UART.

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

abhipray — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 15:12:59 GMT

It is set to 2048.

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

jakub — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 09:38:05 GMT

When you use macro:

NRF_CLI_UART_DEF(m_cli_uart_transport, 0, 64, 16);

What size do you set for the last parameter? It is Rx buffer size. I have also encountered some problems when it was too small. It shall be power of 2 or multiple of 8... I don't remember now. Just increase it like:

NRF_CLI_UART_DEF(m_cli_uart_transport, 0, 64, 1024);

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

abhipray — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 23:42:43 GMT

I am using pyserial to build and send the command. I also see the issue when I type a long command via terminal.

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

jakub — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:13:19 GMT

are you using a python sricpt you or you are wring a long command "by hand" ?

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

abhipray — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 16:49:32 GMT

I have verified that my NRF_CLI_CMD_BUFF_SIZE is set to 1024 characters. I checked via gdb that cmd_buff is of length 1024 but only gets filled up to 258 characters-- the proceeding values are nulls and the remainder of the argument is treated as a second command

RE: NRF CLI cannot handle long arguments

Jakub Rzeszutko — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 08:50:41 GMT

Hi,

By default command accepted by CLI can have 128 characters. You can change this in sdk config: NRF_CLI_CMD_BUFF_SIZE. This is size of static buffer so it will impact your RAM usage especially that this buffer is doubled.

In addition by default CLI assumes that command will not take more than 12 arguments. CLI will treat argument 12 and all following as one. You can change it as well in sdk config: NRF_CLI_ARGC_MAX.