RE: Keyfob / remote control of the smart lock via zigbee using single nRF52840 based on input pin states.

Marjeris Romero — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 09:13:07 GMT

Hi Andrew,

I recommend going for the nRF52840 DK for the developing process. The reason being that the nRF52840 DK includes an on-board debugger which will make your life much easier, specially if you are new to Nordic development: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/Development-Kits/nRF52840-DK

You can find a local distributor for the nRF52840 DK here: https://www.nordicsemi.com/About-us/BuyOnline

After you have a working prototype you will be of course free to scale down the hardware and use instead a dongle like the one you linked to or our official nRF52840 dongle https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/Development-Kits/nRF52840-Dongle

Or perhaps make your own custom hardware 🙂

I would anyways recommend getting your hands on a nRF52840 dongle, since it's highly recommended you set up a Zigbee sniffer when developing for Zigbee, it's easy to setup using Wireshark: https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/sdk_tz_v4.1.0/nrf802154_sniffer.html

A sniffer trace would be one of the best sources for debugging information when working with Zigbee.

To answer your questions about integrating the Danalock v3 as a part of a Zigbee network using the nRF52840 as the network coordinator the answer will beyes, this should be achievable. How easy or time consuming this will be will depend on your previous knowledge of Zigbee protocol and Nordic devices and SDK. You can always get help along the way from us here in Devzone if you struggle with something.

In the nRF5 Thread and Zigbee SDK we have a door lock example which uses the door lock cluster which can be controlled using commands from the Zigbee CLI example: https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/sdk_tz_v4.1.0/zigbee_multi_dynamic_door_lock_nus_example.html

So first step would be to dig in in our the door lock cluster works and how you can interact with it.

About storing the network parameters in the persistent storage, this is actually what it's done by default by the Zigbee stack, but in the CLI example the persistent storage is erased using

zigbee_erase_persistent_storage(ZB_TRUE);

after a reboot or power-off just to make the developement and testing process easier for developers.

Let me know if you have any more question and good luck in your Zigbee journey! 🙂

Best regards,

Marjeris