What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

brian fleming — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 17:03:26 GMT

Hello, this support site seems to have changed, and I can not find how to mark this question as answered.

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

Jay Tyzzer — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:03:13 GMT

I believe if you use the drag and drop to program the device it will do a Erase of the flash which means if the Softdevice was in there it will be gone. One way to fix this is to merge the Softdevice with the application code using Mergehex.exe which can be downloaded with other utilities from the Nordic website. Then you can use the drag and drop method.

FYI -- The SDK 11 has the example and the Softdevice merged already... in the hex subdirectory.

X:......nRF52_SDk_11.0\examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_hrs\hex

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

brian fleming — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 17:39:26 GMT

Hello, yes it is advertising because I can see it as an available BLE device on the phone. The website seems to have changed because I can not see where I can indicate that this question has been answered correctly.

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

Joakim Jakobsen — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 11:45:12 GMT

Also, you can take a look at this page in our infocenter, about programming softdevices.
Cheers.

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

Joakim Jakobsen — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 11:38:26 GMT

Ok, I'm glad you sort of got it to work.
So you can see your device advertising now?
If you don't have any more questions at this point, I'd appreciate it if you could close the case by marking the answer as correct.
You are of course welcome to post another question at a later point if you face any more problems.
Cheers.

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

brian fleming — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 18:21:37 GMT

Hello,

I got it working last night, but I have no idea what I did differently.

I had a suspicion that the soft device was the problem, and I tried the batch build to build only the soft device and flash it first, but the IDE would not allow me to do it. It seems to work now though, although I have to close the IDE, and start again sometimes.

No, I have not made any changes to the examples at this point. I am not smart enough to attempt that, later I hope.

Thank you for the link to the tutorial, I need all the help I can get.

Cheers, Brian Fleming

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

Joakim Jakobsen — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 12:25:25 GMT

Hi again Brian.

Yes, you are correct. I forgot to mention that you can also drag-and-drop the hex file to the removable drive that appears.
But as the pre-compiled hex file is working, we can rule out any HW issues.

You haven't made any modifications to the examples you are testing?
My guess would be that the softdevice is not being downloaded to your DK.
The softdevice can be found as a hex-file in the SDK;
sdk_root/components/softdevice/s130/hex

This file doesn't need to be built or modified, you can simply flash it directly to your DK.
This can be done by using nRFGo Studio, like I mentioned in my comment. nRFGo Studio is a software solution provided by Nordic Semiconductor and can be used for programming nRF5x devices through SEGGER J-Link®. After the softdevice is on your board, you can flash your application.

You should take a look at our tutorials page here on devzone.
There we have a Getting started with the nRF51 or nRF52 Development Kit tutorial that I'm sure will be helpful.

Note; I will get a notification when you reply here on devzone, so there is no need to send an e-mail.

Best regards,
Joakim.

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

brian fleming — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:24:50 GMT

Hello, thank you for your reply.

I am completely new at this IDE, so I have never used the nRFGo Studio, so I don’t know at this time how to load a file and send it to the nRF51 development board. However, I do recall somewhere reading that the .Hex files could be copied and pasted into the device directly, so I took a chance and with Windows File Explorer copied and pasted the file to the JLINK folder, after erasing the device in Keil. The LED 1 blinks at a rate of 0.5Hz and my BluetoothLE ‘sniffer’ app now displays Nordic_HRM which confirms that the radio is working.

Prior to the above, I tried flashing etc, the HRM program in Keil, and the device did not advertise.

I hope this helps, because I really need to get some work done again.

Cheers, Brian Fleming

P.S. is email the correct method of replying to your support responses?

RE: What do I need to do to get a sample program in the SDK to advertise?

Joakim Jakobsen — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:16:15 GMT

Hi Brian!
That's strange. You can't make any of the examples in the SDK work?
Could you try to erase the DK, and then try to use one of the pre-compiled hex-files in the SDK?
If you could test the HRS-example, the pre-compiled hex-file can be found here: sdk_root/examples/ble_peripheral/ble_app_hrs/hex/ble_app_hrs_s130_pca10028.hex.
This file includes both the application AND the softdevice, so you only have to download that file to your board.
You can use nRFGo Studio or nrfjprog to erase and download the hex-file. Best regards.