nRF Toolbox - UART App

[Nordic_nRF52840]

We are using the Nordic nRF52840 on our current design.   Currently,   I am using nRF Toolbox -UART app on my

mobile phone to send data via 9 buttons available on the App. Everything is working fine as far as "sending"

data from the phone to the nRF52840 chip. 

However, as far as I can tell,  the App does not have a "receive" feature built-in, is there anyway to find out

and verify that the phone can receive the data from the target board? perhaps with a different app?

Thanks  in advance

JIMMY

[Vidar Berg]

Hi Jimmy,

It should be possible to see the received data in the log. Swipe right in the app to open it. You may also use the nRF connect app available on both iOS and Android for the same.

[Nordic_nRF52840]

Hello Vidar,

I am  testing the sample project  (ble_app_uart) from the SDK.  I don't see any where in the main.c file that

I can send data to a mobile device.  Could you give me hint modifying the code  to send something like "HELLO" to mobile device, and be able to see 'HELLO" showing up on the App's  mentioned above?   

So far I have no luck to achieve such result. 

Thank you for your help.    

JIMMY

[Vidar Berg]

Hello Jimmy,

The example is set up to relay data received on the serial port (UART) to the connected Central over BLE. So you need a serial client on your PC to send the "HELLO" message. Please refer to the UART/Serial Port Emulation over BLE documentation for instructions on how to set it up. 

[Nordic_nRF52840]

Thank you Vidar - I see the response now.

I have two more questions for you.

(1) Where do I change the connection TIMEOUT so that the connection is established longer? .  Right now if no activity, the connection is timed out around 4 - 5 minutes or so. I see the message on my iphone saying  something like  "The connection has timed out unexpectedly".

(2) The nRF52840 device has two UART modules (UART and UARTE) . It sounds like the UART iis used by BLE for nus services.  How can I setup the UARTE for other use? I tried to search the samples project in the SDK but I had not seen anything mentioned about the 2nd UART module.

Thanks again for your help !!

JIMMY

   

[Vidar Berg]

Hi Jimmy, 

1. The connection should not time out. Do you have access to an Android phone you can try the same with? It sounds like the connection may be terminated by the phone for some reason.

2. The example use UARTE0 by default, so UARTE1 is available. You may follow the UART driver documentation to see how you can set up the driver for the second UARTE instance. 

[Nordic_nRF52840]

Hello Viidar,

Currently, within the main() function I already have the uart_init() function below, and you meant I would need another uart_init() for the UARTE1?

void main()

{

   uart_init();    //for UARTE0

//need another uart_int() here for UARTE1 ?

.

.

}//end main

//***********************************//

static void uart_init(void)
{
    uint32_t                     err_code;
    app_uart_comm_params_t const comm_params =
    {

        .rx_pin_no    = RX_PIN_NUMBER,            //#define RX_PIN_NUMBER       at file: pca10056.h
        .tx_pin_no    = TX_PIN_NUMBER,            //#define TX_PIN_NUMBER   
        .rts_pin_no   = RTS_PIN_NUMBER,           //#define RTS_PIN_NUMBER  
        .cts_pin_no   = CTS_PIN_NUMBER,           //#define CTS_PIN_NUMBER  
        .flow_control = APP_UART_FLOW_CONTROL_DISABLED,
        .use_parity   = false,


#if defined (UART_PRESENT)
       //  NRF_UART_BAUDRATE_115200
       .baud_rate    = NRF_UART_BAUDRATE_115200
#else
        .baud_rate    = NRF_UARTE_BAUDRATE_115200
#endif
    };

    APP_UART_FIFO_INIT(&comm_params,
                       UART_RX_BUF_SIZE,
                       UART_TX_BUF_SIZE,
                       uart_event_handle,
                       APP_IRQ_PRIORITY_LOWEST,
                       err_code);
    APP_ERROR_CHECK(err_code);
}
/**@snippet [UART Initialization] */

[Nordic_nRF52840]

How the new function for UARTE1 can be distinguished from the UARTE0? I don't see anything mentioned in the uart_int()  to expose itself exclusively for UARTE0? I feel that the documentations provided is way insufficient for the user.  We need your help here.   Thanks    JIMMY

[Vidar Berg]

If you look at the app_uart_fifo.c::app_uart_init() function you can see that it's using the UART driver which I linked to earlier, and the UART instance ('0') is defined at the top of the same source file.