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?

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

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

[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.

[jpo38]

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

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

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?

[jpo38]

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

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Ah, I did not catch that you downloaded the release from your previous post. I am not able to reproduce it with the release either, I have attached the output log: pc-ble-driver-example.log. This has been running for ~40 minutes now.

What versions are the dongle and DK that you run the application on?

[jpo38]

For me too sometimes it works for minutes with no crash, but sometime it constantly freezes. The dongle is a PCA10059 with SD APIv3, it was programmed by nRF connect itself first time I started it, the app is a PCA10040 with hex file uploaded to this post.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

I had the example running over the weekend, it had still not failed this morning. Which revisions are the Dongle and the DK, are they both v1.x.x?

[jpo38]

Its written 1.0.0 on my dongle, for the DK, it was installed by nRF Connect, it reports "Connectivity firmware version: ble-connectivity 0.1.0+Aug-14-2018-15-12-51. SoftDevice API version: 3. Baud rate: 1000000."

I'm having more difficulties to reproduce the problem those days. After a reboot, I see the freezing one or two times, then I can't reproduce them anymore. I'm wondering if Windows could give the process more priority at some point.

By the way, could this be a driver issue? When I plug the dongle, it appears in device manager as "nRF Connect USB CDC ACM", pilot used is usbser.sys (from system32/DRIVERS), Microsoft version 10.0.16299.334 (WinBuild.160101.0800). Are you using the same?

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

I'm see the same info, but with driver version 10.0.17134.1. Could you check if you are able to update the driver?

[jpo38]

Unfortnately, I'm not allowed to do that....

[jpo38]

Hello Jørgen,

As you cannot reproduce the problem and as I can on many different computers here, I was wondering if there could be a problem with our Windows setup (like using wrong drivers, or having the antivirus, firewall mess things up or whatever).

So I took a different computer, formatted the drive and did two tests:

- Installed Windows 7 (Enterprise with SP1 x64)
- Simply installed nrfconnectsetup260.exe (to get the good driver and have the dongle appear in Device Manager, it show up as "nRF Connect USB CDC ACM" driver info reports "1.0.1.0" "11/05/2018")
- Installed vc_redist.x64_2015.exe as nrf-ble-driver uses VS2015 runtimes
- Downloaded nrf-ble-driver-4.1.1-win_x86_64.zip from github
- Unzipped it, ran heart_rate_collector_sd_api_v3.exe COM3
- Pressed Enter, got ~15 notifications and nothing more: so I could reproduce the bug

Again, formatted the drive and:

- Installed Windows 10 (Enterprise version_1703)
- Did not even installed nrfconnectsetup260.exe (as the dongle appears directly in Device Manager)
- Installed vc_redist.x64_2015.exe as nrf-ble-driver uses VS2015 runtimes
- Downloaded nrf-ble-driver-4.1.1-win_x86_64.zip from github
- Unzipped it, ran heart_rate_collector_sd_api_v3.exe COM3
- Pressed Enter, got ~15 notifications and nothing more: so I could reproduce the bug

So there is definitely a problem with this driver and it does not come from my setup here.

- Either your machine has something installed/configured that makes it work better than mine
- Either I did not explain you correctly how to reproduce the issue

Could you please test from a freshly installed Windows (following the steps above)?
Also, can you confirm that when you start notifications with the device from nRF Connect, it sends you frame of data of 20bytes long. And can you also confirm that when you run heart_rate_collector_sd_api_v3.exe program you get lots of data during one second, not only one per second as the standard "Nordic_HRM" app behaves?

Kind regards,

Jean