Use nRF52 DK or nRF52 USB Dongle without nRFConnect

[Markus Mueller]

Hi,

is it possible to use the nRF52 dev kit and/or the nRF52 Dongle (nRF52840 Dongle) wiith the dongle firmware without nRFConnect?

Background:

We want to use a nRF52 dev kit or the nRF52 dongle with our test environment.

The functionality of the dongle firmware (firmware flashed with nRFConnect) is what we need in our test environment, to scan, connect, pair/bond, read, write, ...

After a quick research I neither found the dongle project, nor the api description to use this firmware via the serial com port.

Thanks for any help and best regards,

Markus

[Markus Mueller]

Hi Frank,

we currently only tested it with the nRF52 DK, not with the Dongle.

For that we used the pre-build .hex from here. But you can also build the firmware for you self. The needed steps are described here . They are just build the connectivity firmware of the SDK and merge it with the SoftDevice to one .hex.

For testing, we don't want to use the nRFConnect app (itself/standalone), but want the same functionality of the nRFConnect within our testframework.
This could be done with the pc-ble-driver from here .

So I have acctually no experience with the Connectivity firmware on the Dongle, sorry

BR

Markus

[Frank]

Hi  Markus,

Thanks for your explanation and time.

Previously I also did this exercise with the nRF52 DK/the PCA10040(nRF52832) and indeed I love the PC BLE driver concept.  I set up a UART HCI connection between an iMX6UL evk board running the BLE PC driver acting as Application board and the Nordic DK running the connectivity applic acting as Connectivity board.

Now I want to do the same exercise with the nRF52840 dongle instead of the Nordic DK, I flashed the dongle with the connectivity hex that is available in the SDK. Unfortunately the dongle is no longer accessible for flashing firmware.  I could more or less repair with Zadig the driver on Windows but the DFU trigger is no longer active, so it makes it impossible to flash firmware on the dongle with nRF tools.

I'm experiencing more or less what is here described:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openthread-users/9TFIATWWrxw

Possible solutions as described here didn't work:

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-nrfconnect-core/blob/master/doc/serial-timeout-troubleshoot.md

UPDATED:

Also interesting:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/nrf-device-setup

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-nrfconnect-core/blob/master/build/drivers/nrfconnect-driver-installer.exe

Best regards,

Frank

[Frank]

USUPDATE:

After playing around with Zadig I got my connectivity back on Windows 10. 

Not sure what went wrong before... 

However the dongle only starts the blinking RED LED when pressing connect in the nRFConnect Programming applic. When inserting the dongle and pressing the RESET button the RED LED does NOT start to blink.

But I'm still not there with my POC with the PC BLE driver and the connectivity applic running on the nRF52840 USB dongle.

 

Best regards,

Frank