Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 07:22:05 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

Thanks for your support on this. But this is what we found on our testing.

If the device has to operate on both scanning and advertising roles simultaneously then with S132 soft-device version v5.1 did not work. This does not work on both 52810 and 52832 chipsets. The issue is the same as reported above the device stops advertising randomly and never ever advertises again until the device is reflashed with the softdevice and new firmware.

Hence we had to move to newer version of the soft-device which is 6.0. On the 6.0 as S132 is not production tested on the 52810 we had to move to the 52832 and it worked fine.

So we had to change our design from 52810 to 52832 for the same. Thanks to fanstel we were using identical version of modules we were able to replace the BT832A containing the 52810 with BT832 containing the 52832 without any hardware redesign. Even then the customer had to bear with the higher module cost of BT832 for the same.

I suggest that you need to highlight that the NRF52810 does not support Central role in a production version of the latest SDK release. This will hep many of design houses to choose the best possible chipset for a solution based on the capabilities rather than going through the painful process as getting to know at the end juncture that this feature set in not supported on the 52810 chipset as we had the problem above.

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 07:15:51 GMT

The kit was powered last night, still advertising every 1 seconds. Though we used S132 v5.0 which is default in SDKv14.2, that should not have an impact on the problem you experience (would need to update softdevice header files to v5.1 and recompile project to try with v5.1). But you may try for comparison v5.0 if you suspect it may be relevant.

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:22:12 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

Can you please do an overnight test. Because the issue is very random sometimes it happens in 5 minutes, sometimes after an hour or so. So i suggest you to run overnight and you will definitely see this issue. I have also attached the softdevice that i am using for flashing for your reference.

Currently we are testing it on a fanstel BT832A module without connecting any external peripherals. I do not have a dev kit for the nrf52810.

Regards

Ashwin

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../s132_5F00_nrf52_5F00_5.1.0.zip

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 09:19:40 GMT

I have tested it for 18minutes without any problems now, have you tried to run this on a devkit with no external hardware?

Best regards,
Kenneth

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Fri, 19 Oct 2018 17:05:03 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

I have tested the above hex file attached. The device stopped advertising after 10 minutes. I do have beacons in my office so the device is scanning them continually. Can you please check with some beacons on at your end?

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 15:01:46 GMT

Hi,

Not able to recreate this here, adding the compiled hex file for you. The only difference I assume is that we don't actually have any beacons here?

Best regards,
Kenneth

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ble_5F00_app_5F00_beacon_5F00_pca10040e_5F00_s112.hex

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 07:03:51 GMT

Thanks for details, since you are using IAR I will have to check with one of those familiar with IAR to take a look.

Kenneth

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 11:11:12 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

The project file's complete name is ble_app_beacon_pca10040e_s112.ewp and it is under the folder ble_app_relay_control\pca10040e\s112\iar. We are using IAR embedded workbench for our development.

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 10:43:55 GMT

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 09:59:48 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

Please unzip the same under the ble_peripheral folder and please use SDK 14.2, soft device S132 5.10. Please use the pca_10040e_s112 project

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 08:58:02 GMT

Please specify which folder I should unzip the project and exactly which project file I should open.

Best regards,
Kenneth

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 07:11:32 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

Any updates on the same? Our product design is currently in pause because of the above issue. If you can please update on the same asap it would be very helpful. Awaiting your response on the same.

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 13:13:41 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

I do not have anything like that. I have double checked it too. I have attached the application source code for your reference. I have used SDK 14.2 and S132 soft device with version 5.10. Please compile and flash pca_10040e_s112 project. I have modified the project to compile and work with the S132 soft device.

Regards

Ashwin

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ble_5F00_app_5F00_relay_5F00_control.zip

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 12:53:40 GMT

I can see from comparing original hex file with readout dump that several pages are erased, e.g:

Are you sure you don't have a bootloader or application that somewhere may erase flash pages, e.g.:

nrf_nvmc_page_erase(), NRF_NVMC->ERASEPAGE or sd_flash_page_erase().

Best regards,
Kenneth

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 10:32:53 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

I am not writing any data onto the flash. The application is just a simple beacon example application in nordic SDK and i have added the scanner functionality to it. If you just keep the scan window and scan interval to 1 second and the beacon advertisement interval to 1 second it is very easy to reproduce the same. If you want me to send the application please let me know.

I cant use the latest SDK because it does not support the production version of S132 softdevice for nrf52810 chipset and i have to use the S132 softdevice and not s112 as i need scanning and broadcasting in my application.

The hex dump of the application built as well as the one downloaded differs. I am attaching the hex files as well as IAR ROM & RAM configuration file for your reference.

Regards

Ashwin

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../hex_5F00_files_5F00_with_5F00_config.zip

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 15:39:48 GMT

[quote user="ashwin.radhakrishna"]One more point to note is once the underlying firmware goes into such a mode it never advertises again even if you restart the device with a power toggle nor re-flashing the same app again.[/quote]

This does not make any sense no. Are you writing any data to flash?

You can readout the flash content by calling: nrfjprog --readcode dump.hex

Do readout on a fresh working product and on a failing, compare the hex files to find the memory area that might have changed.

I assume you have already checked out:
http://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/com.nordic.infocenter.sdk5.v15.2.0/nrf52810_user_guide.html?cp=4_0_0_5_0

You may also consider updating to the latest nRF5 SDK and S132:
http://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/com.nordic.infocenter.nrf52/dita/nrf52/compatibility_matrix/nRF52810_ic_rev_sdk_sd_comp_matrix.html?cp=2_2_3_2

Best regards,
Kenneth

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 13:34:03 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

Yes, you are right i am using "never time out" in both the cases. One more point to note is once the underlying firmware goes into such a mode it never advertises again even if you restart the device with a power toggle nor re-flashing the same app again.

The only way i can recover is to re-flash the soft device and then flash an application sending connectable advertisements then it starts to advertise again and i am able to run any application.

I have also tried the below way of scheduling advertisements and scanning independently using a timer as mentioned in the below steps and this case ran in for few hours before it had the same above mentioned problem.

Scan 5 seconds

Stop Scan

Advertise for 5 seconds

Stop advertise

Then again Scan 5 seconds

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 13:17:37 GMT

So you are using "m_adv_params.timeout = 0; // Never time out." I assume?

What about the scanning? You are only calling sd_ble_gap_scan_start() with .timeout = 0 there also?

You never get a timeout event?

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Ashwin — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 06:48:32 GMT

Hi Kenneth,

Thanks for your suggestion. I had earlier used scan interval and scan window of 1 second but as per your suggestion changed its value to 2.5ms. After changing the i am able to get advertisements more consistently but even then after a period of 5+ odd minutes the advertisement from the device completely stops but the scan has been working without any interruptions at all. By the way i am advertising the beacons every 1 second and forever.

Regards

Ashwin

RE: Device not advertising after few minutes when concurrent scan and advert procedure is ongoing on nrf52810 with SDK 14.2 and S132 v5.10 soft device

Kenneth — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 13:42:50 GMT

Hi,

I suggest to set scan window = scan interval = BLE_GAP_SCAN_WINDOW_MIN. This should have the least effect on active links or other procedures you may have.

Best regards,
Kenneth