Again messing with the nrfx drivers, glue and error headers.

[rico]

Hello there,

I created a project a while ago with the SES and the SDK 15.x. For a new Project, we would like to move to PlatformIO. Right now I am evaluating where we will use some available frameworks/libraries or create local libraries.

I am trying to integrate the nrfx drivers into the project. So I downloaded the SDK and after about 10 minutes some horror memories came back to my mind :D

So what I have done:

Downloaded the SDK 16.0.0
Copied the modules\nrfx folder into the project
Copied the nrfx_config.h from modules\nrfx\templates\nRF52840
A tried to reuse my old glue and log headers but they seem to be different, so I went back to the Documentation and found that for the SDK the files from integration should be used
So I copied the nrfx_log.h nrfx_glue.h from the integration\nrfx folder into the project, I skipped the legacy folder in hope it will not be needed. (You should never hope, it is needed)
So i copied the legacy folder as well
I found that nrfx_common.h file includes nrf.h files from the MDK folder (I am a bit disappointed since I was hoping that all the needed sources are located in the modules\nrfx directory)
I included the MDK directory
Now I recognized the nrfx_glue.h includes the nrf_assert.h file from the components\libraries\util (At this point I am just adding includes paths out of disappointment)
Compiled again and found that "nrf_error.h" included from In file included from util/app_error.h:57:0,
from util/app_util_platform.h:60,
from include/nrfx_glue.h:182,
from nrfx/nrfx.h:46,
from src\nrfx\drivers\nrfx_adc.c:41:

At this point I gave up as the above way seems not to be the right way to use nrfx standalone.
How is it done? Thanks

[Mojo]

I use this library https://github.com/IOsonata/IOsonata

It compile most used part of the SDK into it and it's drivers are better designed and better performance than the SDK. Best of all, no sdk_config jungle.  Only one drawback, It's C++ so it won't work with SES.  But no worries, even though it is C++ object designed, It is still more performance the plain C driver of the SDK.  Eclipse is the preferred IDE but you can also use it with IAR, Keil and CrossWorks but not with SES.

[rico]

Thanks for the tip I will have a look at it, but I would like to stick with C at the moment.

[Simonr]

Hi Rico

Have you checked out the nrfx set of drivers on our GitHub with its own documentation files? The intention of this page is to provide drivers that can be used in other projects than the SDK examples. 

The recommended development process from Nordic is to start out with an SDK project where these drivers are already implemented and add whatever you'd like from there.

Best regards,

Simon

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

Don't under estimate C++. See this post https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/53106/uart-communication-fifo-error.  There is a comparison of uart driver implementation.  The C++ IOsonata is about 15-20% faster than nrfx. Even without DMA IOsonata is still faster then nrfx with DMA.  All that without the #defines jungle of the sdk_config.h

[hmolesworth]

This issue has wasted untold hours for us, mostly due to migrating across versions from 14.2 to 15.2, 15.3 and 16.0. I monitor nRFx on github for updates, but sometimes a simple override helps. Here is an example (nRF52840 with SPI3, but nRF52832 is same general idea):

// Example:
// Add "FEATURE_REQUIRE_NRFX_SPIM3" to the project preprocessor definitions

// Add this at the top of sdk_config.h:
#if defined(FEATURE_REQUIRE_NRFX_SPIM3)
#define SPIM_PRESENT               1
#define NRF_SPI_ENABLED            1//0
#define NRFX_SPI_ENABLED           1//0
#define NRF_SPIM3_ENABLED          1//0
#define NRFX_SPIM_ENABLED          1//0
#define NRFX_SPIM3_ENABLED         1//0
#define NRFX_SPIM_EXTENDED_ENABLED 1//0
#endif

There is also a _glue and _legacy header which might require using (in this case) FEATURE_REQUIRE_NRFX_SPIM3 as a conditional, I forget but will edit later if it comes to mind.