Establish Mesh network between 3 nRF52840 dongles without Development Kit

[Nimish]

AIM: To establish a mesh network having 3 nRF52840 dongles and end devices(mobile phones) will be connected to the dongles. The primary aim is to send data(string/number) from one end device(mobile phone). This data should be broadcasted to every other end device(mobile phone).

How can I achieve this in simple steps.

I have nRF5 SDK version 15.0 and nRF SDK for Mesh version 2.2.0 

I am using Segger Embedded Studio to build Hex file and nRF Connect Desktop windows application's Programmer Application to flash the Hex file into dongle.

Kindly provide me steps or flowchart so that I can work on it

Thank You

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Hi,

I am taking a look at this now. My main question to you though is how you want to be able to debug the dongle when you do not have a dev kit attached to it? How are you planning on developing mesh communication between the dongles when you do not have any real logging capabilities?

Kind Regards,

Bjørn

[Nimish]

So it's not possible by only using dongles?

[Nimish]

Yes I have downloaded Segger Embedded studio which contains J link. So now how to create mesh network. I have the mesh SDK version 2.2.0 and 15.0. I am not getting how to use them.

[Nimish]

Can you provide me with the steps for how to implement mesh using development kit. I just want to achieve data communication between mobile phones via dongles. Like the data sent by a mobile phone should be received by all other mobile phones connected to a network. So my question to you is does it require mesh or not. 

[Nimish]

What do you mean by debug

[Bjørn Kvaale]

The problem is that there is no segger j-link in the dongle itself. You can flash over programs using the nrf connect for desktop programmer app.

[Bjørn Kvaale]

For this use case, I do not believe you would require mesh. You could achieve this via the multilink example which I mentioned in another one of your cases. But again, without having an nRF52 dev kit to log the dongle, I do not see how you would be able to see any logging information & hence how could you debug the program if something does not work as expected? By debug, I mean problem solving to solve bugs in the SW (see this link for a good definition).

You can test the multilink example by flashing the multilink central code onto a nrf52 dev kit & flash the ble_app_blinky examples to multiple dongles via the nRF Programmer app.

[Nimish]

Thank you so much I will try to run this.

[Nimish]

So I must connect one dongle via SWD cable to the development kit and flash the ble_app_multilink_central hex file on the dongle connected to development kit.

The ble_app_blinky hex file should be flashed on other dongles?

Also in nRF5 SDK 15.1 there is no pca10059 file so which hex file should I flash, will pca10056 will do for nRF52840 dongle?

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Yes, that is correct. You will need to update the pca10056 file slightly to make it work with the dongle. In the preprocessor tab in Segger Embedded Studio, you will need to change PCA10056 to PCA10059. You will also need to take a look at the PCA10059.h board header file & figure out the LED names. Then, make changes in the LED init function in the multilink example to initialize the LEDs of the dongle instead of the dev kit. Apart from that, everything should be the same.

[Nimish]

How to change PCA10056 to 59, there is no option to change

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Why are you trying to change the options of the retarget.c file? You need to right click the project file on top like shown here:

Then, change the PCA10056 define to PCA10059.