nRF52840 production test - PCA10059 USB ACM protocol

[Hanowar123]

Hi folks,

I need a production test of an nRF52840 module at PCB level. Our board connects near instantly with nRF Connect + Bluetooth Low Energy, and displays its device name, etc. The hardware is a PCA10059 dongle. The small size dongle and the fact this confirms 2-way communication makes it suitable (in my opinion) for a first stage board test.

The nRF Connect software is plainly commanding the PCA10059 dongle through a virtual COM port, but I cannot find any information on what to send. The information is buried in the code of the "Bluetooth Low Energy" plug-in. Connecting with any terminal emulator just brings up a repeating hex code string. I have LabVIEW primarily to send serial data in the test.

Is there any documentation (aside from in the code) on what the BLE app sends to the PCA10059 dongle? Even knowing where to look in the code would help, there are dozens of files!

Rgards,

Rob.

[Sigurd]

Hi,

The connectivity firmware is controlled using pc-ble-driver. See this link. https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver
The nRF Connect for Desktop Bluetooth app uses the python bindings, see this link: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver-py

[Hanowar123]

Hi Sigurd,

It's evident then the PCA10059 USB dongle cannot be used directly as a serial port, it must be used through Python. The enumeration example looks simple.

But my knowledge of Python is zero and the LabView test system cannot interface with Python I believe. Anyway thanks for your help and I will look into the code. My expertise is not in software but there is nobody else here to do this for me.

-Rob