Problems with sniffer

[Gus Gustafson]

I am trying to get the sniffer to run and having problems. Tried both 0.9.7 and 1.0.1 same results on both. OS is W7-32 home. Hardware, have tried several PCA10000 and a PCA10001. After install and setup, all work fine until the first time the PC is rebooted. After rebooting sniffer software can not detect the hardware. Change to a different device and it works, until reboot. nRFgo Studio verifies that the correct software is loaded on the device before and after the reboot, and the serial port is available as per Windows device manager. I am running out of devices that have not been tried with this setup, suggestions please. I don't really want to have to reinstall Windows from scratch every time I want to run sniffer. Is there a way to use a terminal emulation program to poke at the serial port to determine which side of the port the problems lies on?

Gus

[Hung Bui]

Hi Gus,

You may need to unplug and plug the dongle back when the console's looking for the COMPort. I usually have to do that.

If that doesn't work you can try to reprogram the dongle again by pressing Ctrl+R.

Please let me know if the issue remain.

[Gus Gustafson]

Been there, done that. Have tried several PCA10000 and PCA10001, several different revisions. All work only one time and then after a reboot nothing.

[Hung Bui]

I will report this to the sniffer developer to see if he has a solution.

I guess you may already tried the following, but just in case:

Could you tried to

• Update to latest Jlink driver
• Press F in the console to clear out the COM port.
• Connect the dongle to different USB port.
• Uninstall the COM port in Device Manager and install it again.
• Try to manually modify the COM port to another number in device manager.

[Gus Gustafson]

OK, have tried several Jlink drivers, no help, Clearing the comm port with F, no help, Different USB port, no help, and un-installing all the different PCA10000 and PCA10001s that I have tried. None work.
I had one last PCA10000 that had never been connected, tried it this morning. Worked after programming. Used nRFgo Studio to program it. Logged out of Windows, logged back in, still working. Now unplug the dongle and plug back in. Device manages shows comm port exists, but Sniffer does not find the device. nRFgo studio verifies that the hex image is still correct. Serial port sniffing software shows that Sniffer.exe is writing to that comm port but nothing is coming back from the device.

[Gus Gustafson]

One more note. Just discovered that if I program the PCA10000 with the MCP firmware then put it back to the sniffer firmware it runs until the next time it is disconnected.