NRF52 DK as BLE sniffer

[jonas.woerner]

Hi,

Currently I am trying to get my NRF52840-Preview-DK to work as an BLE sniffer.

however, I fail at my first step, because I am unable to get anything running on the chip, no led flashes, no NFC field, nothing happens.

I tried flashing the heart rate example, it flashes succesfully but then again, nothing happens, it doesnt advertise either. also no serial output.

I currently have 2 DK boards and I can get none of them working, on my other DK, the Segger led doesnt even turn on and no USB device is detected, I tried going into bootloader mode and drag-n-dropped the nordic OB file .bin onto it, then the board starts to flash fast, but when i reconnect it, its dead again.

what the heck am I doing wrong????

[jonas.woerner]

update: I got the sniffer working on one boar! I uploaded the RSSI viewer from the toolbox, and after that the sniffer, then it worked, however, the other board is still dead.

Also I can only see advertisement packets in wireshark...

[Bjørn Kvaale]

It may be that the preview DK has issues with nRF Sniffer, as it is not explicitely supported (link 1, link 2). Are you using the nRF Sniffer v1 or v2? Have you gone through the nRF Sniffer User Guide v2.2 (or the earlier user guide if you are using v1)?

Regarding the dead Preview DK, have you tried using a different usb cable or a different usb port? Have you by any chance used one of the boards with a Power Profiler Kit? Have you by any chance cut the solder bridge for nRF Current Measurements? (I am not suggesting you to do this if you have not done so).

[jonas.woerner]

hmm. I used V2 and have gone through the guide V2 more than once. in the sniffer zip there is a hex file named PCA10056, so I assumed it should work, which it did in the end (at least a little bit :D). regarding the dead DK, no I didnt change anything on it.. however I just bought a Powerprofiler kit which I plan to use, is that a bad idea??

and what else could it be? it seems I can flash a new segger fw, but it wont boot afterwards.

[Bjørn Kvaale]

jonas.woerner said:

I just bought a Powerprofiler kit which I plan to use, is that a bad idea??

 Nope, not a bad idea at all. Just wondering if you had cut the solder bridge for current measurements.

jonas.woerner said:

and what else could it be? it seems I can flash a new segger fw, but it wont boot afterwards.

 Did you power cycle the board once you flashed the new segger fw? Did you flash the Segger FW like described in step 3 of this link.

The v2 sniffer FW should work with the 52840 PDK, however it has not been tested specifically with the preview DK.

[jonas.woerner]

yep, power cycled and flashed firmware like in step 3... it then blinks fast and if I unplug and replug it, its dead again

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Did you download the interface MCU FW from this link? If not, could you please try that? Just follow step 3 of this link.

Which version of the nRF52840 PDK do you have? Could you please post the line underneath PCA10056 of the white sticker on the interface MCU of the 52840 PDK?

[jonas.woerner]

wow. thats strange, I did exactly as described, and it worked first try... so thanks for that. But I did this multiple times before and it did not work?!

However, im glad it works now, thanks

Jonas