OpenThread border router with Ubuntu PC and nrf52840

[Darshan Prajapati]

I am using guide provided at https://openthread.io/guides/border-router to create border router. I am using Ubuntu 18.04 on a PC. I tried same on RPi 4 too and seeing same issue. I am seeing problem after installation of ot-br-posix. I run sudo ot-ctl state command I get message "OpenThread daemon is not running". I checked log otbr-agent service and found that it keeps restarting due to some failure. Following is the status:

darshan@Ubuntu18:~$ sudo service otbr-agent status
● otbr-agent.service - Border Router Agent
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/otbr-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2020-06-22 16:31:48 CDT; 952ms ago
  Process: 3359 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/otbr-agent $OTBR_AGENT_OPTS (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 3359 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Jun 22 16:31:48 Ubuntu18 systemd[1]: otbr-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 22 16:31:48 Ubuntu18 systemd[1]: otbr-agent.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
darshan@Ubuntu18:~$

I am using nRF USB port besides RESET button and nRF power source button is set to USB. So configuration and hardware connection seems perfect as per the guide. I am using master branch of ot-br-posix repo and using master branch of openthread repo to build NCP firmware for nrf52840.

Please let me know what's going wrong here and how can I make border router work.

[Edvin]

Hello,

Did you try this on a RPi 3B? Does that work?

I haven't really tried this guide myself. Do you suspect that the issue is with the nRF FW, or on the border router? The reason I ask is that we didn't provide this guide nor source code for the border router, so I don't know where to start looking in this case. Perhaps you can check the github for the border router FW and see if you can find out why it behaves as it does, or report the issue there with the developers of this FW.

BR,
Edvin