How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

Mahesh Reddy — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:20:41 GMT

Hello I am beginner can you help me to learn the coding for nrf9160and nrf9160DK

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

Mahesh Reddy — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:19:24 GMT

Hello I am beginner can you help me to learn the coding of nrf9160 and nrf9160DK

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 12:13:48 GMT

Hello, Jon Helge & Sigurd.

I unfortunately was wrong! When I was able to see PCA20035 device from LTE Link Monitor, it was only usb_uart_bridge implemented! When I merge usb_uart_bridge with central_uart example, I am able to debug nRF52840 with RTT but unable to see PCA20035 device through LTE Link Monitor and debug nRF9160!

Would you, PLEASE, take a look at the usb_uart_bridge_with_central_uart solution I was using, try it on your side and let me know what I am doing wrong?

Other than that, do you have any info from inside the Nordic house, will you release new SES version soon that will allow us debugging?

Thanks in advance. Looking forward to reading from you.

Sincerely,

Bojan.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../central_5F00_uart_5F00_with_5F00_usb_5F00_uart_5F00_bridge.zip

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

Jon Helge — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 08:16:43 GMT

Hi bojan,

good to see that you have had some progress. If you are using a J-link or a DK as programmer/debugger the simplest way to get debug output from the nRF52840 when it is set up as a uart/usb bridge is to enable RTT debugging

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/46083/how-to-setup-zephyr-for-rtt-logging-with-nrf9160

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 14:39:20 GMT

Hello, Sigurd & Jon Helge.

I somehow succeeded to combine usb_uart_bridge with central_uart example so that I can now see PCA20035 device from LTE Link Monitor and see printk() messages sent from nRF9160. Here attached you can see prj.conf and main.c files I used in a project. What I am unable to do, however, is to see printk() messages coming from nRF52840 code! I am currently developing BLE code for nRF52840 part and I would like to be able to debug it. Do you have any idea what I am missing here and how to print debug messages from nRF52840?

Thanks in advance for your time and efforts!

Sincerely,

Bojan.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../0181.main.c

# General
CONFIG_REBOOT=y
CONFIG_HEAP_MEM_POOL_SIZE=8192
CONFIG_SYSTEM_WORKQUEUE_STACK_SIZE=2048
CONFIG_GPIO=y
CONFIG_POLL=y
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y
CONFIG_EVENT_MANAGER=y
CONFIG_LINKER_ORPHAN_SECTION_PLACE=y
CONFIG_MPU_STACK_GUARD=y
CONFIG_SPEED_OPTIMIZATIONS=y
CONFIG_DEVICE_POWER_MANAGEMENT=y
CONFIG_SYS_PM_POLICY_APP=y

# USB
CONFIG_USB=y
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_STACK=y
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_MANUFACTURER="Nordic Semiconductor"
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_PRODUCT="Thingy:91 UART"
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_VID=0x1915
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_PID=0x520F
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_SN="PCA20035 12PLACEHLDRS"
CONFIG_USB_COMPOSITE_DEVICE=y
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM=y
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM_RINGBUF_SIZE=4096
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM_DEVICE_COUNT=2

# Settings
CONFIG_FCB=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS_FCB=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_PAGE_LAYOUT=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_MPU_ALLOW_FLASH_WRITE=y

# Logging
CONFIG_LOG=y
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT_MODE_DROP=y

# UART
CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_UART_INTERRUPT_DRIVEN=y
CONFIG_UART_LINE_CTRL=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_UARTE=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=n
CONFIG_UART_1_NRF_UARTE=y
CONFIG_UART_1_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=n

# Enable the UART driver
CONFIG_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=y
#CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=y

# BLE
# Enable the BLE stack with GATT Client configuration
CONFIG_BT=y
CONFIG_BT_CENTRAL=y
CONFIG_BT_SMP=y
CONFIG_BT_GATT_CLIENT=y

# Enable the BLE modules from NCS
CONFIG_BT_GATT_NUS_C=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_FILTER_ENABLE=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_UUID_CNT=1
CONFIG_BT_GATT_DM=y
CONFIG_HEAP_MEM_POOL_SIZE=2048

# This example requires more workqueue stack
CONFIG_SYSTEM_WORKQUEUE_STACK_SIZE=2048

# Enable bonding
CONFIG_BT_SETTINGS=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_PAGE_LAYOUT=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_NVS=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS=y

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 11:40:34 GMT

Hello, Jon Helge.

Thanks for pointing out this sample for me! I tried the sample and it behaves as expected on v1.2.0tag - I am able to debug nRF9160 code from LTE Monitor app.

However, to the best of my understanding, BLE NUS Service offered in the sample can be implemented only in BLE peripheral devices. What we need is to act as a BLE central device, to scan the area looking for the BLE beacon with the fixed UUID, read data advertised by BLE beacon and transfer them to nRF9160. For that purpose, we would need BLE NUS Client implemented.

Am I correct when thinking that we can not use connectivity_bridge sample for BLE central devices?

IMHO, the easiest way to implement what we need is to keep default connection between nRF9160 and nRF52840 (made of &uart0 and &uart1), to use &uart0 for debugging and &uart1 for data transfer between nRF9160 and nRF52840. In addition to that default hardware connection, I would need BLE stack (called SoftDevice in SDK 16.0 environment) for BLE scanning and reading advertised packages. Moreover, that BLE-related task should co-exist with the usb_uart_bridge task in the code for nRF52840. I tried to simply merge usb_uart_bridge and central_uart samples similar way Sigurd did in his hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project (here attached you have a main.c file). The code compiles successfully but I am unfortunately unable to see PCA20035 device from LTE Monitor app. I guess this is due to some bad settings. Do you have any idea what I am missing here? Is the approach I described above OK for you or you have some better suggestion for me?

Thank you very much for your time and efforts, guys!

Sincerely,

Bojan.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../56850.main.c

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 08:36:15 GMT

Hello, Sigurd.

Thanks for your explanations.

[quote userid="15146" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/58246/how-to-debug-nrf52840-and-nrf9160-designs-on-thingy-91-board/237270"][/quote]

You want to combine the usb_uart_bridge with the central_uart example ?

I don't understand why you want to do that.

There are mainly two reasons why I wanted to combine usb_uart_bridge with central_uart example:

Our architecture implemented in nRF9160 is not the same like used in lte_ble_gateway sample. We would need from time to time (rarely) to tell BLE module to scan for BLE beacons with the fixed UUID, to read the advertised data from that beacon and finally to transfer those data to nRF9160 SiP module.
Adding all those patches (modification of board/arm files, inserting board.c and nrf52840_reset.c files), at this level of understanding zephyr environment, seemed complicated and like building a tower from the cards. Changing one little line in one little file can break everything.

So, having in mind all of the above, I thought to simplify the things and go with the default connection between nRF9160 and nRF52840 (two uart modules). &uart0 would server for debugging purposes and &uart1 will be used for rare communication between nRF9160 and nRF52840 modules. uart callback function will tell me where there is a communication request. If I need some more GPIOs (for interrupts or so), I thought to take rts and cts pins from &uart0 and set them to 0xFFFFFFFF (like you did).

Sigurd, is my reasoning OK, what would I need to add in configuration files to keep default &uart0 and &uart1 connection between the modules and use &uart0 for debugging and &uart1for simple data transfer mechanism between the modules?

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Bojan.

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

Jon Helge — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 14:29:01 GMT

Hi,

this pull request might be of interest regarding adding BLE to the nrF52840 on Thingy:91

https://github.com/NordicPlayground/fw-nrfconnect-nrf/pull/1960

It is a dual uart to USB bridge which allows for both debug printing and modem tracing. It also adds the possibility to use the the Nordic UART Service on BLE for the debug uart.

It is huge PR, but I guess it will go into master during the next week.

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

Sigurd — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 12:51:59 GMT

[quote userid="76830" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/58246/how-to-debug-nrf52840-and-nrf9160-designs-on-thingy-91-board/236747"]What I noticed while compiling hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project are two warnings about deprecated macros:[/quote][quote userid="76830" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/58246/how-to-debug-nrf52840-and-nrf9160-designs-on-thingy-91-board/236747"]Could that be an issue stopping Thingy:91 to be visible?[/quote]

Yes. NET_BUF_POOL_DEFINE has been replaced with NET_BUF_POOL_FIXED_DEFINE in the latest release. This was done as part of this PR.

[quote userid="76830" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/58246/how-to-debug-nrf52840-and-nrf9160-designs-on-thingy-91-board/236747"]Also, can you tell me what is the purpose of that Reset pin coming from nRF9160 to nRF52840? [/quote]

It’s used to reset the nRF52840 during startup/reset of the nRF9160. See the comments in the function bt_hci_transport_setup(). When the nRF9160 is reset, the nRF52840 will also reset. It's a kind of synchronization mechanism that ensures that the nRF52840 is in a good known state when nRF9160 setup the HCI transport layer between the nRF9160 and nRF52840 at startup.

[quote userid="76830" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/58246/how-to-debug-nrf52840-and-nrf9160-designs-on-thingy-91-board/236971"]I wanted to add usb_uart thread to the bluetooth central_uart example[/quote]

You want to combine the usb_uart_bridge with the central_uart example ?

I don't understand why you want to do that. If you go for the same architecture as used in the lte_ble_gateway sample, then you want to run the HCI controller on the nRF52840 together with the usb_uart_bridge. (hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge). Then you run the bluetooth central_uart sample(Bluetooth Host + application) on the nRF9160.

The Bluetooth architecture then looks like this:

Adding the usb_uart_bridge to the same figure, you get something like this:

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 17:03:43 GMT

Hello, Sigurd.

I wanted to add usb_uart thread to the bluetooth central_uart example the similar way you did in hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project. Now, to the best of my understanding, reset pin (P20) in hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project serves to keep nRF52840 in reset state until all bytes on h4 lines are received and drained correctly. That's why you keep reset pin HIGH until:

	while (uart_fifo_read(h4, &c, 1)) {
		continue;
	}

To the best of my understanding, again, I think I don't need to keep nRF52840 in reset state in central_uart example. nRF9160 and nRF52840 are interconnected through MCU_IF[7:0] pins where, by default (in common.dts files) &uart1 and &uart0 interfaces are placed. So my first guess was just to add usb_uart thread from your example to central_uart example. I did it and the compilation passed successfully. However, I was unable to see PCA20035 board from LTE Monitor app. Here is how my prj.conf file looks like:

#
# Copyright (c) 2018 Nordic Semiconductor
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-BSD-5-Clause-Nordic
#
CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLES_DEFAULTS=y

# Enable the UART driver
CONFIG_UART_INTERRUPT_DRIVEN=y
CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=y

# Enable the BLE stack with GATT Client configuration
CONFIG_BT=y
CONFIG_BT_CENTRAL=y
CONFIG_BT_SMP=y
CONFIG_BT_GATT_CLIENT=y

# Enable the BLE modules from NCS
CONFIG_BT_GATT_NUS_C=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_FILTER_ENABLE=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_UUID_CNT=1
CONFIG_BT_GATT_DM=y
CONFIG_HEAP_MEM_POOL_SIZE=2048

# This example requires more workqueue stack
CONFIG_SYSTEM_WORKQUEUE_STACK_SIZE=2048

# Enable bonding
CONFIG_BT_SETTINGS=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_PAGE_LAYOUT=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_NVS=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS=y

 # USB
CONFIG_USB=y
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_STACK=y
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_MANUFACTURER="Nordic Semiconductor"
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_PRODUCT="Thingy:91 UART"
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_VID=0x1915
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_PID=0x520F
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_SN="PCA20035 12PLACEHLDRS"
CONFIG_USB_COMPOSITE_DEVICE=y
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM=y
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM_RINGBUF_SIZE=4096
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM_DEVICE_COUNT=1

# Logging
CONFIG_LOG=y
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT_MODE_DROP=y

# UART
CONFIG_UART_LINE_CTRL=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_UARTE=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=n

 # UART
CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_UART_INTERRUPT_DRIVEN=y
CONFIG_UART_LINE_CTRL=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_UARTE=y
CONFIG_UART_0_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=n
CONFIG_UART_1_NRF_UARTE=y
CONFIG_UART_1_NRF_FLOW_CONTROL=n

#General
CONFIG_REBOOT=y
CONFIG_HEAP_MEM_POOL_SIZE=16384
CONFIG_POLL=y

I just added USB and UART related things from your hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project. Am I right about the reset pin? Am I missing something in configuration that makes my PCA20035 board invisible?

Looking forward to read your feedback, Sigurd.

Sincerely,

Bojan.

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 09:35:51 GMT

Hi, Sigurd.

Thanks for your reply and useful info shared! I will focus on point 2) now...

I tried to implement the patches manually by following the differences within nrf.patch and zephyr.patch files.

I think the project lte_ble_gateway is successfully patched because it is working either when I build and download .hex file from SES or when I use .hex file you shared.

I think something is wrong with hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project though! When I use .hex file you provided, I am able to use LTE Link Monitor and debug. When I compile the project from SES and download generated .hex file, I can't see Thingy board on LTE Link Monitor!

I also used the following west commands to build and flash Thingy:91 board but with no success (Thingy:91 board still invisible through LTE Link Monitor):

west build -b nrf52840_pca20035 -d build
west flash -d build

What I noticed while compiling hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge project are two warnings about deprecated macros:

NET_BUF_POOL_DEFINE(cmd_tx_pool, CONFIG_BT_HCI_CMD_COUNT, CMD_BUF_SIZE,
		    BT_BUF_USER_DATA_MIN, NULL);
		    
NET_BUF_POOL_DEFINE(acl_tx_pool, TX_BUF_COUNT, BT_BUF_ACL_SIZE,
		    BT_BUF_USER_DATA_MIN, NULL);

Could that be an issue stopping Thingy:91 to be visible?

I also needed to comment the following two lines of lte_ble_gateway prj.conf file because otherwise I was unable to load the project into SES:

#CONFIG_CLOUD_UA_BUTTONS=n
#CONFIG_CLOUD_UA_CONSOLE=n

Also, can you tell me what is the purpose of that Reset pin coming from nRF9160 to nRF52840? Do you use it to reset nRF52840 during start-up process or to keep the nRF52840 SoC in reset state until the moment you want to receive some BLE data?

Thanks in advance for your help. It is appreciated as always!

Sincerely,

Bojan.

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

Sigurd — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 15:09:40 GMT

Hi,

1) SES debugging: There are issues with debugging with both SES v4.42a and 4.30c. The bugs has been reported internally, and we are working on a solution.
Most likely we will release an updated version of SES. Note that a workaround for 4.30c is to set Project "zephyr/zephyr.elf" as active project. But, for the moment, I recommend using Segger Ozone instead of SES for debugging: https://www.segger.com/products/development-tools/ozone-j-link-debugger/

2) My patch is made for NCS v1.1.0, I have not done a NCS v1.2.0 patch, but in the meantime you can try to add the changes manually by looking at the patch-files.

3) Maybe you can take a look at the central_uart sample, and see how the UUID filtering is done there.

RE: How to debug nRF52840 and nRF9160 designs on Thingy:91 board

bojan — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 11:45:00 GMT

Sigurd, Heidi, I need your help, guys. We are hitting the wall and are unable to advance in our development since we are unable to debug our designs and benefit from nRF52840 BLE services on Thingy:91 board at the same time.

Heidi, is it possible to debug with SES on branches 1.2.0 or master?

Sigurd, we were forced to move from the 1.1.0 tag to 1.2.0 or master because we need cloud_client example and communication with AWS IoT Cloud. I was unable to apply your R2 patches from here for hci_uart_with_usb_uart_bridge example on 1.2.0 or master. Any suggestion how can I do it?

Thanks in advance, guys, for your time and efforts.

Sincerely,

Bojan.