nrf52840 Hardware flow control query

[mayank_patel]

Hi All,

I have one custom board based on IMX6UL on which i'm using Nordic's nrf52840 chip.

I'm using zephyr's hci_uart sample application on nrf52840 for beacon scanning.

nrf52840 chip is communicating with IMX6UL over UART.

Explored below 2 cases :

1) Full UART (Tx,Rx,RTS,CTS) from both side (IMX6UL as well as zephyr/nrf52840)

2) Half UART (Only Tx,Rx) from both side (IMX6UL as well as zephyr/nrf52840)

In both above cases my beacon scanning application works fine (Scanning around 65 surrounding beacons).

So, Can i go with the Half UART configuration on both side?

Does it have any drawback when there will be large number of beacons available to scan?

- One of the suggestion i got from my colleague is that if will use Half UART i have to flush UART buffer at the end of each scanning.

Thanks,

Mayank

[Sigurd]

I recommend using UART with flow-control. With flow control you don’t risk losing any data(buffer overrun), if one of the devices need to do some processing, and is therefore at some point not able to receive all the data being sent.

[mayank_patel]

Thanks Siguard,

In my case i was exploring Half UART (Only Tx, Rx) just because my particular hardware has some issues with the RTS, CTS pins.

I learnt that using full uart also covers worst case scenarios. So full UART (Tx, Rx, RTS, CTS) is the robust and recommended way for the UART communication between two devices.

Thanks,

Mayank