Run Thread and Zigbee on nRF52840

[Nicolas Kauffmann]

Hi,

I wished to test multiprotocol with one software but I was wondering if it was possible to compile an application which could switch between zigbee and Thread (and even BLE).

I tried to compile one but there are redefinitions errors about the 802.15.4 layer in the different libraries (libzboss.a and libopenthread-nrf52840-sdk.a), which sounds logical.

Am I missing something or is it just impossible ?

Thank you in advance,

Nicolas

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

We do not have any examples running multiprotocol with Thread and Zigbee, only Thread/BLE and Zigbee/BLE. I do not see any hardware issues with doing a switching multiprotocol solution with Thread and Zigbee. However, there could be redefinition issues as you describe, as both stacks use the RADIO peripheral and IRQ handlers. This is not a problem with BLE, as the softdevice is a precompiled HEX file. 

Which exact redefinition errors are you getting?

Best regards,
Jørgen

[Nicolas Kauffmann]

Hi Jorgen,

Thank you for answering.

I'm following the documentation to add dynamically Zigbee support to BLE examples and I don't exactly know what combination of these libraries I have to use:

- libopenthread-nrf52840-softdevice-sdk.a

- libopenthread-nrf52840-sdk.a

- nrf_radio_driver_softdevice.a

but whatever the combination, I get at least these redefinitions:

nrf_802154_energy_detected /nrf_802154_transmitted_raw / nrf_802154_transmit_failed / nrf_802154_received_raw / nrf_802154_receive_failed

All these functions are defined in both libzoss.a and libopenthread-nrf52840-softdevice-sdk.a / libopenthread-nrf52840-sdk.a

Best Regards,

Nicolas

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

I have spoken with the developers of the protocol stacks, and it will require some rework in the driver and stacks in order to support this. We are currently looking into adding this support to our SDK, but we do not have any details on when this will be released at this time.

Another solution could be to flash two separate applications to the board and branch between them, similar to our DFU bootloader solution.

Best regards,
Jørgen

[Nicolas Kauffmann]

Ok thank you for the information.

Best regards,

Nicolas