Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 09:29:52 GMT

Ok, I don't know who you were talking to, but I'm glad you were able to solve the issue.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you, but I will forward your concern regarding the documentation.

Best regards.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 16:06:21 GMT

I spent about two hours on the phone with tech support Monday and they duplicated exactly the issues I was having. They were able to work thru it with me, and the immediate bonding issue is apparently resolved. The original subject line still stands, however. You may close this ticket, and work to have the documentation improved as pertains to bonding and what it takes to actually erase the bonding information in the dev kit, which i asked you about several weeks ago.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:36:04 GMT

Could you try using another example from our SDK, i.e the ble_app_hrs, and see if you get the same error?

Here's what I do when testing the CGMS example:

1. I erase my nRF52-DK using nRFgo Studio, because simply re-flashing the example might not erase any encryption keys present.

2. I erase any bond information in nRF Connect.

3. I flash the pre-compiled hex file from the SDK to my nRF52-DK.

4. When I observe that the DK is advertising, I start the scan in nRF Connect.

5. Connect to the device advertising as Nordic_CGMS and then pair/bond (see pictures below.)

After that, the example works just as expected, and the connection is stable.

Also, the connection issue you have now, is not that related to the original question. So you could preferrably start a new thread solving this.

Cheers,
Joakim.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 17:35:23 GMT

I have now come full-circle. I took your advice to go back to basics, run the example exactly as instructed. Am I using the correct instructions, as shown under Testing back up at the start of this thread? I compile, download, and run a pristine copy of the CGMS app. I start nRF Connect on the PC. In step 2 I am supposed to Bond by starting at the Settings button for the device. There is no such button that I can see. There is a starburst thing on the host device, and when I click it and select "Security parameters", that seems to open a settings dialog, the only thing I can find that is remotely close, like this:

Since I am supposed to be Bonding, I turn on "Perform Bonding" and then "Apply". By now the CGMS app has timed out from advertising, so I press Button 1 on the dev kit to restart, then click Connect on nRF Connect. That yields

You can see the error log in nRF Connect in the screenshots. Here is the log captured from the device via the serial port:

<warning> nrf_sdh_ble: RAM starts at 0x20005668, can be adjusted to 0x200020E0.
<warning> nrf_sdh_ble: RAM size can be adjusted to 0xDF20.
<info> app: Continuous Glucose Monitoring example started.
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.
<info> app: Slow advertising with whitelist.
<warning> nrf_sdh_ble: RAM starts at 0x20005668, can be adjusted to 0x200020E0.
<warning> nrf_sdh_ble: RAM size can be adjusted to 0xDF20.
<info> app: Continuous Glucose Monitoring example started.
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.
<info> app: Slow advertising with whitelist.

PLEASE just tell me what I'm doing wrong, and why following the instructions to the best of my ability gets me absolutely nowhere.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 16:07:13 GMT

And I'm sorry to keep repeating as well. As I've asked before, how do I delete the bonding information in the dev kit, so that I can delete it on both sides and start afresh. According to what you've told me and what I've observed, just reloading the firmware with a new build does not seem to do it.

I will switch back to using the desktop version of nRFconnect as you suggest adn see what progress I can make there. But ultimately I need to show the client a reliable way to connect with their iPhone(s).

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 15:28:28 GMT

Hi!

I'm sorry that you are having such trouble getting this to work.

As I said in a previous answer, the;
<info> app: Connected to a previously bonded device.
<info> app: Connected
<info> app: Failed to secure connection. Disconnecting.
<info> app: Disconnected
indicates that your device is trying to connect to a previously bonded device. If the bonding information on that
device is deleted, the connection will drop.
If you are following the instructions for the example, step 9 deletes the bond.
When you complete step 9, you will not be able to reconnect until you have deleted the bond information on both the
device and the PC/Phone.
So if you want to connect, and stay connected, please try to erase the bond information on both phone and your device, reconnect,
bond the devices, and do not delete it.
If that doesn't work, please let me know.

I'm sorry if I keep repeating myself, but as I said this example works just fine for me.
Also, the instructions are made with reference to the desktop version of nRF Connect, not the phone one. So
some differences there is to be expected.

Cheers.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 10:32:52 GMT

I am running the unmodified CGMS application, attempting to connect using a Samsug phone. It will always connect, and regardless of whether I I attempt to access any of the characteristics or just let it sit there, it disconnects 5 seconds later. Here is a log as captured on the USB virtual serial port of the dev kit, with two successive attempts to connect:

<warning> nrf_sdh_ble: RAM starts at 0x20005668, can be adjusted to 0x200020E0.
<warning> nrf_sdh_ble: RAM size can be adjusted to 0xDF20.
<info> app: Continuous Glucose Monitoring example started.
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.
<info> app: Connected to a previously bonded device.
<info> app: Connected
<info> app: Failed to secure connection. Disconnecting.
<info> app: Disconnected
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.
<info> app: Connected to a previously bonded device.
<info> app: Connected
<info> app: Failed to secure connection. Disconnecting.
<info> app: Disconnected
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.

I am well beyond the "jiggle the handle" stage. I need to be able to give my client a specific sequence of instructions that will reliably connect. even better would be to have the app behave like the documentation, and just connect every time.

Steve Hendrix

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 13:40:24 GMT

Hi!

"knowing that it's "experimental", and knowing that such markings usually mean it's more reliable that the supposed "released" versions"
I think you meant to write less reliable than non-experimental examples?

As you are down to just this issue, which is not that related to the original question, you could start a new thread that is only focusing on this.

But it is very hard to tell what is causing these connection issues. Especially since I'm not able to reproduce them myself.

Maybe you could provide some more information?
If you can provide a sniffer log, that could shed some light on what is happening.
Also, if you made any changes to the code, posting the changes could prove useful.
Your setup, with what device, which phone, software versions, which errors you might be getting and so on.

You could try to test another example, preferably one that is out of the experimental stage. The HRS example should be a very reliable example you could test.

Best regards,

Joakim.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:56:40 GMT

Perhaps I should start a fresh thread, as now I'm down to just the Bonding issue (although the documentation still does not line up with what I see on the screen - I've learned to work around that).

I am using the CGMS example, knowing that it's "experimental", and knowing that such markings usually mean it's more reliable that the supposed "released" versions. When it connects, it works great, and streams data all the way from my very low-level analog sensor thru the SAADC thru the BLE stack to an iPhone. But by far the majority of the time, it either refuses to connect, or connects and instantly disconnects, with various complaints about authentication, bonding, etc. I have not been able to see any pattern to when it connects and when it doesn't. I have tried everything suggested above, deleting the bond information from the phone, reloading the firmware and hence erasing anything that may have been stored on the device, doing both at the same time, etc.. I have chased the error messages down dozens of rabbit holes that get lost in the layers of system calls.

I just need to be able to load firmware and have the phone be able to connect and stream data. It should not be this hard. What am I missing?

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 13:37:37 GMT

I'm glad you found that helpful.

Well, for the most part the it will erase the application before programming, without you having to perform the "erase step" manually.
But if you for any reason would like to erase your device, we do have a windows application called nRFgo Studio.
"nRFgo Studio supports auto detection of Nordic nRFgo motherboard and radio modules. It also support the nRF51 and nRF52 evaluation kits and programming nRF5x devices through SEGGER J-Link®". You can use that to erase your device or flash hex-files to it.
You can also use nrfjprog to acheive the same.

The infocenter is worth mentioning, as it contains alot of information about devices, softdevices, SDK's, examples etc.

Be sure to let us know if you have any more questions.

Cheers,
Joakim.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 12:04:40 GMT

It sounds like you've hit the nail very precisely on the head, and I have some reading to do. That's exactly what I was asking for, some pointers to cut thru the mass of documentation. One remaining unclear item: You mention a need to erase my target board as a separate step from writing the firmware to it. I would expect, based on many dozens of device programmers that I've used in the past 4 decades, that the J-link would by default erase before programming, and would require special steps to avoid that erase step. I'm running it from within Visual Studio, which hides most of such details. How would I perform the "erase" step that you describe?

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 11:27:14 GMT

Hi again.

[quote user="SteveHx"]I'm not sure either. I can't find any documentation as to what this "Bond" feature is, what it is good for, how to turn it on or off, etc.[/quote]

Pairing: Devices that are initially connected can exchange encryption keys and encrypt the link. When they have,
the link is secure and they are paired.

Bonding: Paired devices can be bonded. This means that they store the keys that have already been exchanged when
they paired and use those again the next time they connect.

This means that when you delete the bond information on just one of the devices,
the other device will try to reconnect using the old bonding information. This will not match the deleted device,
so the connection drops.

[quote user="SteveHx"]1) How to configure a particular application as to BLE parameters, choice of variables to expose on the BLE interface, options as to those variables (read-only, write-only, etc.)?[/quote]

We do have nRF Connect, where you can change the connection interval and so on. This is not possible on most
phones, because the OS handles that.
I don't know what it is you want to change, but in general you have to make changes to the code to acheive this. If you tell me more specific what parameters you want to change, I can help you track down the part of the code you will need to change.

[quote user="SteveHx"]choice of variables to expose on the BLE interface[/quote]

What do you mean by this?
Are you talking about Services and Characteristics?
Or what information that is advertised by your device?

We have a tutorial section here on devzone that you might want to take a look at.
We have an advertising/service/characteristic tutorial. They were made with reference to SDK 11. But apart from some API changes etc, there is a lot of useful information.
One of my colleagues also have a Custom Service Tutorial on his GitHub, which is compatible with SDK 14.2.0.

[quote user="SteveHx"]2) How to correct the examples so they will connect reliably with either nRF Connect or with an actual user device?[/quote]

The examples works just as expected when I try it myself. There is no step in the instructions that doesn't work when I try this.
The connection is consistent, it advertises as expected, connects, bonds and runs just as explained.

Maybe you could tell me which part of the code you made changes to, if you made any changes?

[quote user="SteveHx"]Step 1 works. When I connect, I can't even get to the bonding at step 2, because even my fast fingers can't get there before it decides to reject me. When I first tried this, it would at least let me make the selections and click the final "Pair" button before tossing me out on my ear, with the same errors.[/quote]

This suggests that you have deleted the bond information in nRF Connect, but not in your application.

[quote user="SteveHx"]<info> app: Connected to a previously bonded device.[/quote]

Your device tries to connect to nRF Connect using the keys stored when you bonded the device. This information is deleted in nRF Connect, so the connection is dropped.
Try erasing your board, download the application again, delete any bond information in nRF Connect and try again.

I would also like to note that you are testing an experimental example in our SDK.

Best regards.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 20:54:22 GMT

I can't wait a week for each answer, and I can't deliver a house of cards to my client. The whole BLE implementation here seems quite shaky. I have fallen back to testing just the unmodified CGMS application. I can get to step 2 of the instructions:

You can also test the application with nRF Connect by performing the following steps:

Compile and program the application. Observe that the BSP_INDICATE_ADVERTISING state is indicated.
Connect to the device from nRF Connect (the device is advertising as 'Nordic_CGMS'), then bond to the device. To bond, click the settings button for the device in nRF Connect, select "Pair", check "Perform Bonding", and click "Pair". Wait until the bond is established before you continue. Observe that the BSP_INDICATE_CONNECTED state is indicated.

Step 1 works. When I connect, I can't even get to the bonding at step 2, because even my fast fingers can't get there before it decides to reject me. When I first tried this, it would at least let me make the selections and click the final "Pair" button before tossing me out on my ear, with the same errors.

nRF Connect shows this:

15:40:21.1400

Scan started

15:40:29.9580

Connecting to device

15:40:29.9860

Connected to device E7:BF:CF:EA:F0:0D

15:40:30.2540

Attribute value read, handle: 0x03, value (0x): 4E-6F-72-64-69-63-5F-43-47-4D-53

15:40:34.0120

Authentication failed with status BLE_GAP_SEC_STATUS_PAIRING_NOT_SUPP

15:40:34.0330

Disconnected from device E7:BF:CF:EA:F0:0D, reason: BLE_HCI_REMOTE_USER_TERMINATED_CONNECTION

and the serial port on the PCA10040 shows this:

<info> app: Continuous Glucose Monitoring example started.
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.
<info> app: Connected to a previously bonded device.
<info> app: Connected
<info> app: Failed to secure connection. Disconnecting.
<info> app: Disconnected
<info> app: Directed advertising.
<info> app: Fast advertising with whitelist.
<info> app: Slow advertising with whitelist.

I'm STILL begging for some actual instructions that work on the supplied examples (latest versions, just downloaded last week), and then for documentation on how to set up an application with custom variables exposed to the BLE interface. If Nordic can't help, are there any users out there who could give just enough guidance to get me past my frustration with non-working documentation?

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 12:13:30 GMT

At 2018-03-06 06:26 AM, Nordic DevZone wrote:

Sorry for the delay.

I can certainly understand about being swamped. Hopefully this is not typical of Nordic support.

1)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.
When you write "03 41 42 43 44" to the "Bond Management Service Control Point" characteristic, you delete the bond
that the application has with nRF Connect.

When you then disconnect the device from nRF Connect and try to reconnect,
you will get an error.
To reconnect you will have to delete the bond information in nRF Connect as well.

I'm not sure either. I can't find any documentation as to what this "Bond" feature is, what it is good for, how to turn it on or off, etc.

2)
You can change some of the connection parameters in nRF Connect, such as the connection interval etc.
Also, you are free to open the CGMS example and modify the code as you please.

No kidding. That's exactly what I've been doing. Right now I'm doing battle with getting it to connect reliably. RF link is solid, RSSI runs about -30 dBm, so that's not it. It will often connect on the first start of the day and run fine for a while. But later it either refuses to connect at all, or connects and immediately disconnects.

Given the number of options available in the BLE stack, surely there must be a configuration utility of some sort, to set all the options and make sure everything is consistent, and especially to designate what variables are exposed on BLE. Microchip did a fine job of that with their config utility for their TCPIP stack, but they similarly hid it where I didn't discover it until I had wasted a lot of time trying to configure header files manually. Surely there is something similar here. I have tried both of the glucose examples, with enough success at times to make me believe they can actually work, but never a solid reliable application, even just compiling them straight out of the box. I have searched all over the various files and cannot find anything that selects what variables are exposed on BLE, etc. So please answer the specific questions:

1) How to configure a particular application as to BLE parameters, choice of variables to expose on the BLE interface, options as to those variables (read-only, write-only, etc.)?

2) How to correct the examples so they will connect reliably with either nRF Connect or with an actual user device?

Steve Hendrix

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 11:26:14 GMT

Hi!
Sorry for the delay.

1)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.
When you write "03 41 42 43 44" to the "Bond Management Service Control Point" characteristic, you delete the bond
that the application has with nRF Connect.

When you then disconnect the device from nRF Connect and try to reconnect,
you will get an error.
To reconnect you will have to delete the bond information in nRF Connect as well.

2)
You can change some of the connection parameters in nRF Connect, such as the connection interval etc.
Also, you are free to open the CGMS example and modify the code as you please.

Best regards.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

SteveHx — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 12:17:52 GMT

I'm sorry too. I have a client anxiously awaiting results, and although the meat of the application is performing beautifully, I can't yet get the BLE connection to be reliable.

Since I spoke of "pressing Enter", and there is nothing labeled so on the mobile nRF Connect, I was clearly using the desktop version as you suggest. However, I have also procured and set up the mobile app, and it sometimes works quite nicely, sometimes not. I decided to power everything down, load firmware from scratch, etc., before having my client try it, and now I get "Authentication failed" and "Fault" crash messages on the serial port most of the time, though it will occasionally connect. Once it connects I can stream data nicely from my hardware to the displayed value, and have explored changes of scaling and update rates quite successfully.

My two biggest questions at this point are:

1) How to enter the "ABCD" authentication string on nRF Connect so I can get past that authentication.

2) How to configure the base BLE connection. There is surely an application, or at least a source file, wherein all the GATT variables and their characteristics are defined. I have used MicroChip's TCPIP Configuration utility for years, although it took me a while to find out about that. I'm hoping to avoid the same time-sink here in hunting for the actual tools.

RE: Example apps do not line up with the documentation.

Joakim Jakobsen — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 13:54:54 GMT

Hi Steve.

I'm sorry that you are having trouble testing the example.

I would start by pointing out that the:

[quote user=""]You can also test the application with nRF Connect by performing the following steps:[/quote]

refers to the nRF Connect app for desktop, and not the nRF Connect mobile app.

You should be able to perform the test using the nRF Connect mobile app as well, but note that the reference to "Play button" etc. in the instructions will not be valid.
Also, the GUI will vary slightly depending on which mobile OS you are using.

I tested the steps above using nRF Connect for desktop, and it all seemed to work just as expected.
Added a screenshot of my nRF Connect view below.

Cheers,
Joakim.