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s140 pc-ble-driver 4.0.0 freezes when receiving too many data

jpo38

I have a nRF52840-PCA10059 dongle.

I have a PCA10040 dev boeard on which I programmed the ble_app_hrs_freertos_pca10040_s132 example after I modified HEART_RATE_MEAS_INTERVAL and BATTERY_LEVEL_MEAS_INTERVAL variables (lines 100 and 95 of main.c) with value 10 (10ms for 100Hz).

If I connect this fast "Nordic_HRM" using nRF Connect (it programmed my dongle with API v3 SoftDevice, I can connect and get notifications from the device.

If I connect this fast "Nordic_HRM" using heart_rate_collector_v3 or heart_rate_collector_v6 example programs (compiled from https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/tree/v4.0.0), then I only get a few notifications and then the app freezes.

When it's frozen, using a debugger I can see that UartBoost::readHandler is not called anymore. If I press Enter (supposed to toggle notifications OFF), I see written

"Setting HRM CCCD"

I see:

UartBoost::readHandler receives: c0 10 0 0 f0 c0 c0 d6 6e 0 bc 1 9c 11 0 0 0 61 3e c0
SerializationTransport::readHandler receives: 1 9c 11 0 0 0

But "Received write response." never shows up. Looks like the soft device freezed and does not send my anything.

When using heart_rate_collector_v2 with a old nRF51 dongle, I observe no freezing.

When using heart_rate_collector_v3, I kept the SoftDevice programmed by "nRF Connect". Also tried with connectivity_4.0.0_usb_with_s132_3.1.0.hex, same behaviour observed.

When using heart_rate_collector_v6, I used connectivity_4.0.0_usb_with_s140_6.1.0.hex.

"Nordic HRM" unmodified device (low sampling rate) does not freeze.

Any ides what could cause this? What does nRF Connect make differently than heart_rate_collector sample?

Parents
  • 0

    Hi,

    Could you check which connection interval nRF Connect and the HR collector example is connected to the peripheral with? If you decrease the sample interval without lowering the connection interval, you might fill up the notification buffers, resulting in the device getting an error code and crashing. Can you also post the log output from the HR collector example that is output to the terminal when you run it?

    Best regards,
    Jørgen

  • 0 in reply to Jørgen Holmefjord

    Can you provide the modified HRS example, or did you only change the two parameters? If you could also provide a sniffer trace between the two connected devices with both pc-ble-driver and nRF Connect, that would also be helpful.

  • 0 in reply to jpo38

    I was missing the capital S in Sleep. However, I did not manage to reproduce this with 5 ms sleep. I can try to increase it further, but of course I would expect some buffers to be filling up if you are not able to handle the data fast enough. My guess would be that either the application or connectivity firmware asserts at some point when you are not able to process the data on your slow machine.

  • 0 in reply to Jørgen Holmefjord

    Probably, please give it a try with a higher sleep, at least to see if you can reproduce the issue.

    In this situation where the PC is not "fast enough" (or the device is actually too fast), I would expect some data to be lost (meaning that the driver, instead of freezing, should just not propagate the data to higher levels). This is how a nRF51 dongle with SD API v2 works, the PC may recieve data at a lower rate than 100Hz (some notifications are being "lost" at some point, probably because a buffer is full), however it never freezes. With nRF52 dongle with SD API v3, the fact that the buffer gets full is not handled correctly and the driver freezes for good. That's what we hope could be fixed.

  • 0 in reply to Jørgen Holmefjord

    Hello Jørgen,

    I have a very fast desktop machine (Win10), I can constantly reproduce the issue here with heart_rate_collector_sd_api_v3. I don't modify any code as I downloaded pc-ble-driver 4.1.0, it has heart_rate_collector_sd_api_v3.exe compiled, I run it, it freezes after I receive less than 20 notifications. I could reproduce this again and again many times today.

    I also have a laptop, slower (Win7), but not that slow (it's a Corei7). It's on this laptop that I had to add Sleep statement to make the issue occur more constantely. Else it's hard to get the freeze.

    If the PC is too slow to process data (which is not the root cause of the issue I guess, as it constantly fails on my fastest computer), there should be no freezing anyway. With SD API v2 and a nRF51 dongle, the system does not freeze, but you "loose" some data (un to 40%): meaning that the driver is smart enough to ignore data when some internal buffer is full....but remaining responsive. With SD API v3 or v6, the driver freezes, this is not good.

    I'm wondering if we could consider having any kind of local support. As this is only reprodcutible on our computers (but on ALL of them!). What about having someone from Nordic come and have a look, is that something possible? Or us coming to you with the computer, then we can do more testing.

    Kind regards,

    Jean Porcherot

  • 0 in reply to jpo38

    I tested with increased Sleep (up to 100), but I still cannot make the device freeze. Can you zip and upload the entire pc-ble-driver directory with compiled driver and application that I can test with?

  • 0 in reply to Jørgen Holmefjord

    As I mentioned in my previous post, I can constantely reproduce this issue even without compiling/modifying any code at all. Just download nrf-ble-driver-4.1.1-win_x86_64.zip or nrf-ble-driver-4.1.0-win_x86_64.zip from https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/releases, unzip and run heart_rate_collector_sd_api_v3.exe with dongle port name as first parameter.

    After it found the device, I hit "Enter", I start getting notifications, after a few seconds, it eventually stops receiving data (sometimes it works for good for minutes, but often it freezes within the 3 first seconds). Then when I press "Enter" again, it reports "Setting HRM CCCD" but not "Received write response.".

    Please let me know what you experience with those executables.


    Kind regards,

    Jean

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