Zephyr HCI_USB on PCA10059

[Trevor]

Anybody got any hints at how to get Zephyr to work on the nrf52840 PCA10059 dongle?

After many struggles, I was finally able to compile Zephyr's sample/bluetooth/hci_usb for v1.14.0 and for master.  v1.13.0 didn't allow for the offset for the bootloader, so I didn't bother with it.

So I got a compiled .hex file and programmed it with the nice new version of nRF-Connect v3.0 and lo and behold, the USB comes up and is recognized by bluez.  Sounds good, huh?

And I really thought I was golden when I tried

sudo hcitool -i hci0 lescan

and saw my BLE devices.  Yeehaw!

But then I went to do

sudo hcitool -i hci0 lecc --random my:nu:mb:er:he:re

and wonk, wonk, wonk, wonk!

Most of the time it just hangs.  Other times I get a very long pause and a handle at address 0.

Switching to my old trusty CSR 4.0, it cuts through the above command like butter and instantly gives me a handle at address 74.

Perhaps I'm missing something.  Should I be changing some setting in

make menuconfig

to enable actual connections?  Scanning is nice, but I want to get some real work done!

Your help would be very much appreciated.

Hex files are attached.

v1.14.0.hex

master.hex

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

Have you tried assigning an address to the device manually?

It's mentioned in this blog post how to do it in btmgmt:

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/nordic-blog/b/blog/posts/nrf5x-support-within-the-zephyr-project-rtos

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[Trevor]

Thanks for your suggestion, Hakon.

In response to (within 'sudo btmgmt'):

static-addr FF:02:03:04:05:FF

I get:

Set static address failed with status 0x0b (Rejected)

Still no luck.

[Håkon Alseth]

I didn't have any issues connecting to the ble_app_hids_mouse example. I just flashed it using your .hex file, went into settings -> bluetooth and clicked on "nRF5_Mouse", and it connected just fine through the GUI in ubuntu 19.04.

However, trying the same thing through hcitool gave me loads of errors.

 

Do you have a bluetooth manager of some sort running in the background? If yes, either try through that one, or disable it and use hcitool/hciconfig to initiate a connection.

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[Trevor]

Hmmm!  Very interesting.

I tried 'sudo service bluetooth stop' then plugged in the dongle and got the exact same behavior (able to scan but not able to connect.

BTW, I was running the bluetooth service with the -E (experimental additions) as suggested.

Your success is encouraging...I'll work on it some more.

[Trevor]

Wow!  Discovered this:  https://github.com/chrippa/ds4drv/issues/123

I am able to connect using bluetoothctl.  Yay!

But why would hcitool work with the old CSR dongle and not the new?

And the answer is important because my application (written in QT) also works with the old and not the new.

[Trevor]

Okay, good news.  I upgraded the version of QT that I was developing on, and my application now works (sort of --see below). 

I'm guessing the old libQTBluetooth is compatible with the new bluez, but ONLY for old-style dongles like the CSR (probably the dongles that come up and show an actual MAC address instead of 00:00:00:00:00:00).

But now the PCA10059 is only connecting to my 51822 modules and not my 52832 modules!

Such is life...

[Håkon Alseth]

Glad to hear that you're making progress. I used "vanilla" ubuntu 19.04 for my tests - no manual installation of bluez and so forth.

Are your nRF52832 modules working if you connect with your phone? Might be that they have no external 32k xtal, and you'll need to configure them to use the internal 32k RC oscillator instead.

 

Cheers,

Håkon

[Trevor]

Oh, yeah.  Modules (both 51822 and 52832) work great with CSR dongle through bluez.  It's just some weirdness in the PCA10059.

I'm going to put the Shark on it!  https://www.nordicsemi.com/?sc_itemid=%7B655FA723-4404-4FBE-8062-7C5C5DCDF36E%7D