Zigbee Light Demo stops responding

[IanAber]

I programmed a NRF52840 Dongle with the example light switch code having changed the channel to 14 which is what my coordinator is on.

I then programmed a NRF52840DK with the example switch code and adjusted the search to look specifically for the dongle with the endpoint at 10. All the other compatible devices in my Zigbee network have endpoints set to 1.

I programmed my Smartthings hub to recognise the Nordic dongle as a simple light bulb.

I put the hub in discover mode and fire up the dongle and the DK which both connect.

The Smartthings hub recognises the dongle as a light and I can turn it on and off from the Smartthings app on my phone.

The NRF52840DK switch also finds the dongle and I can control the light on the dongle using the two buttons on the DK board. The Smartthings hub DOES NOT see the updates to the dongle made from the DK switch unless I manually refresh it, but that is another issue.

Everything is fine for a random amount of time varying between a few minutes and several hours up to just over a day on one occasion. Then the light (dongle) simply stops responding. It no longer responds to the Smartthings hub nor to the DK board switch. If I restart the switch it fails to find the light. Only when I restart the light does it work again.

Does anyone have any idea why this should be happening? Can anyone suggest how I can debug this situation?

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

Have you tried running the light bulb application on the DK, and do you experience this issue on this as well? If you see the issue, you should enter debug mode and check if you can see where the application is stuck. You can also connect the debug out pins of the DK to SWD pinson the dongle, to debug the application running on this as well.

Best regards,
Jørgen

[IanAber]

I compiled the light demo for the nRF52840DK adding in some button handling and a counter and log statement in the main program loop. When the application starts up the counter is updating fairly slowly suggesting that the Zigbee stack is busy doing something. After a while, the system either hangs up on a zigbee free memory call which produces an assert or the device becomes unresponsive to zigbee commands but does respond to buttons, at lease to signal an interrupt but the loop in the main function suddenly becomes very much faster. I am guessing that the zigbee stack is no longer processing anything and is returning back tot he main function immediately.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Can you please share the project you used when seeing this issue? That would help us with reproducing and debugging it.

[IanAber]

I have uploaded the complete Segger project to my WEB site. You can get it at http://www.cedartechnology.com/Nordic/light_bulb.zip.

I joined the device to a network coordinated by a Samsung SmartThings hub which is running on channel 14. To make it easier I simply set the channel to 'All Channels' in main.c so when the board goes into discovery it will search for any coordinator in join mode. I also made the application clear the configuration if the ON button is pressed on startup.

Thanks for your help.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Are you only seeing this issue when it is connected to the SmartThings hub? I have tested the application with light_switch and light_coordinator examples for some hours now, without seeing any issues.

[IanAber]

It is beginning to look like this is something to do with the environment. I have only seen it happen when paired with the SmartThings hub and am in the process now of trying to pair it with a different hub. I suspect it is the light bulb not handling some message being sent by the hub. In the end it is a ZBoss problem as every other device I have works fine in this environment and the example code for the light bulb is not actually being call by the stack so the failure must be in the stack itself somewhere. I am looking for some way to trace what is going on but have, as yet, not found any way to do so.