Long-range and coded phy support for a PC application on nrf52840 dongle

[Hamed Rafi]

Hi,

I am developing a Linux PC application (central) connecting with nrf52840 dongle with s140 v7 flashed on it (for long range support). I am using pc-ble-driver v4.1.1. I have started my application based on the heart rate collector example. 

First issue is that nrf connect v3.3.0 does not support this soft device hence I am unable to use long range feature.

When I try to run the heart rate collector example or my application with this soft device I get the following error:

Serial port used: /dev/ttyACM0
Baud rate used: 115200
Info: Successfully opened /dev/ttyACM0. Baud rate: 115200. Flow control: none. Parity: none.
Status: 6, message: Target Reset performed
Status: 0, message: No response from device. Tried to send packet 6 times.
Failed to open nRF BLE Driver. Error code: 0x0D

If I reset the dongle, nrf-connect BLE suggests to program the device with:
Connectivity firmware version: ble-connectivity 4.1.1+May-07-2019-15-12-18. SoftDevice API version: 3. Baud rate: 1000000.

which seems to be s132 and works with API v3 of the heart rate example / my own application.

How can I have log range and coded phy support for a PC application on nrf52840 dongle? Which softdevice is compatible with PC driver for this purpose?

Thanks!

[Susheel Nuguru]

unfortunately, Longrange is not supported on nRF Connect desktop.

Like you said, the connectivy firmware still uses S132 API which does not support long range.

[Hamed Rafi]

Thank you Susheel,

OK, so I need to have a peer application to test long-range functionality. Is there an PC application example for code phy support on nrf52840 dongle?

[Susheel Nuguru]

Hamed Rafi said:

OK, so I need to have a peer application to test long-range functionality

 Yes, that is correct.

 

Hamed Rafi said:

Is there an PC application example for code phy support on nrf52840 dongle

We consider nRF Connect to be PC side tester of BLE features, but since Coded PHY  s is not supported yet in this, there is unfortunately no other alternative to be used on nRF52 connected to PC.

[Hamed Rafi]

Thank you for your direct responses.

I see, as mentioned in the main question above, I want to write a PC Linux application (central) that supports coded phy. It is required in my project and is also helpful for testing my peripheral long range functionality.

Do you suggest that this is not at all supported by pc-ble-driver connected with a dongle flashed with s140?

Thank you 

[Susheel Nuguru]

Sorry, I oversaw that you only want to interact with nRFConnect APP.

But If you want to write your own application, then you can achieve what you need by interactive with pc-ble-driver v4.1.1 with the nRF52840 dongle having S140 softdevice

[Hamed Rafi]

Great! As a last question on this topic, is there a PC application example code for long range?

[Susheel Nuguru]

No, you need to start this from scratch unfortunately.