nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 05:23:06 GMT

Sorry it took so long to for me to get back about this, I have looked into the protocol starting with the link you provided. Again, I'm not very familiar with wireshark yet and am learning as I go but I did find a couple of hopeful leads, I just haven't really been able to work out what to do with it yet. The two repositories I have been looking at are file:///tmp/mozilla_david0/Lightweight%20Mesh%20Developer%20Guide.pdf (it's listed as a digikey link on search results), https://github.com/Pinoccio/library-atmel-lwm and https://github.com/wireshark/wireshark/tree/master/epan/dissectors . I'm not sure how much any of it is related to what I'm trying to do but hopefully I'll find something helpful in it. I'll try to remember to post findings here so hopefully it can help if someone else has the same issue in the future.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 08:07:56 GMT

I suppose lwmesh is referring to this proprietary protocol by Atmel: https://www.microchip.com/DevelopmentTools/ProductDetails/PartNO/Atmel%20Lightweight%20Mesh. I'm not familiar with this protocol, but I think the first step should probably be to find out if the specification specifies how data is encrypted. Wireshark also seems to have support for this protocol - maybe it supports decryption if you provide the correct key like it does for Zigbee and Thread.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 16:15:03 GMT

Sorry for the slow responce Vidar,

I agree it would have been satisfying to know what was going wrong, but I suppose it could at least be a basic method to get it working if anyone else has a similar problem. Defiantly not an ideal solution but it seems to work.

That was a very vague question, I believe I found the communication stream I'm looking for, and it gives two separate protocols. When it is acting as a beacon (source address 00:23:f7:45:ee:19:6c:50 no addressed destination) it shows the protocol is IEEE 802.15.4 which is what I expected to find. When it is performing a data transfer (source address 00:23:f7:23:a4:73:a7:f1 and destination address 00:23:f7:45:ee:19:6c:50) it says the protocol is lwmesh. I've tried googling to find more information about what the lwmesh protocol is but either didn't find anything talking about what I was looking for or I just don't know enough of the basics to understand what it was saying, for all I know the two protocols are exactly the same and just labelled differently.

All that being said, what I'm looking to do is create a small and easily portable contained package that can intercept and process the transmissions (it's for a blood sugar reading device, I've written some scripts in R that pretty effectively predict whether the blood sugar is going to go high or low but obviously that would be most useful if i can carry it with me on a regular basis. I'm pretty familiar with the raspberry pi and my first choice would be to use a pi zero simply because I wouldn't have to learn to use an entirely new hardware platform. However, if that doesn't end up being practical I could figure out how to port it to an arduino platform. I had considered simply using the dongle but I would end up soldering it together so they could stack without the dongle sticking out. ideally I would like to have a solution that would be somewhat smaller then the dongle and could communicate via the GPIO on the pi.

Also as long as I've got you, I was trying to decode the transmissions using wireshark but haven't been able to get it set up and working. I'm fairly certain that the 'key' is going to be the 10 character serial number of one of the devices. Could you recommend any really basic guide to wireshark for that, or even better a separate package (python, shell, etc.) that could do the decoding?

Thanks so much for all the help,

David

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 12:41:39 GMT

It would of course have been nice to know the root cause of why it didn't work at first, but I'm glad to hear that it's working now.

[quote user="david613"]So, assuming I can identify the thing I'm hoping to could you suggest a small product that could handle the communication protocols that's compatiable with raspberry pi? If not raspberry pi arduino?[/quote]

Sorry, but I'm not sure I understand the question here. Can you try to elaborate? Newer Pi's come with built-in BLE support, but you can also plug-in a nRF52840 Dongle to work with both Zigbee and Thread.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 02:17:03 GMT

Ok, from looking into it for some reason caja file manager is causing all of those, I wouldn't have thought that used python.

I'm actually getting the nrf 802.15.4 sniffer protocol! I cannot say what exactly made it show up, the whole list of what I did before this worked: fresh install of Ubuntu 20 and the wireshark from default repository (I did not add an additional wireshark ppa like the instructions suggested), moved the nrf802154_sniffer.py to the global extcap folder, changed the header of the file to python3, refreshed the interfaces then rebooted the computer.

I'm not sure what the difference was, possibly the version of wireshark, possibly just a new install of wireshark. Or someohter conflict that could have been happening with the OS.

So, assuming I can identify the thing I'm hoping to could you suggest a small product that could handle the communication protocols that's compatiable with raspberry pi? If not raspberry pi arduino?

Thank you very much for all your help with this!

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:37:14 GMT

Ok, new developments, I decided to try a completely fresh install of wireshark which got a bit complicated and ended up with a completely fresh install of Ubuntu 20. I wanted to try getting the nrf802154_sniffer protocol to work before making ANY other changes to wireshark. I installed pyserial and transferred nrf802154_sniffer.py to the extcap folder. When I copied nrf802154_sniffer.py over I got the following in terminal

/Downloads/nRF-Sniffer-for-802.15.4$ sudo wireshark
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
18:08:18.709 Main Warn QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
Initializing caja-open-terminal extension
RuntimeError: object at 0x7f1649abf500 of type RenameMenu is not initialized
RuntimeError: object at 0x7f164b1b74c0 of type FolderColorMenu is not initialized

** (caja:25234): WARNING **: 18:08:57.949: Could not inhibit power management: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.gnome.SessionManager" does not exist
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/caja-python/extensions/dejadup.py", line 156, in get_file_items
include_paths = self.dejadup.get_dejadup_paths('include-list')
File "/usr/share/caja-python/extensions/dejadup.py", line 70, in get_dejadup_paths
paths = ast.literal_eval([stdout][0]) # Convert shell dump to list
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 99, in literal_eval
return _convert(node_or_string)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 98, in _convert
return _convert_signed_num(node)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 75, in _convert_signed_num
return _convert_num(node)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 66, in _convert_num
_raise_malformed_node(node)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 63, in _raise_malformed_node
raise ValueError(f'malformed node or string: {node!r}')
ValueError: malformed node or string: b"['$HOME']\n"

everything from Traceback (most recent call last) is when I actually pasted the file into the extcap folder. After pasting the file there were no more warnings, I refreshed the interfaces, closed and reopened wireshark and there was still no nRF-Sniffer-for-802.15.4 protocol listed. I'm hoping maybe this could give you some insight, I'll try looking into it but I'm not sure what it means off the top of my head.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:36:47 GMT

My bad, I had pressed tab while the gui window was open but it just cycled through the fields as expected, I went back and pressed tab on the terminal and it gave me "balloc channel clear cli history queue recieve resize sleep" and the green light is blinking.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:02:52 GMT

Did you press the Tab button on your keyboard? Also, does the green LED blink?

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:00:18 GMT

ok, I did that with /dev/ttyACM0 and 115200 set as the speed, and I verified that the dongle is showing up as /dev/ttyACM0 when it's plugged in, but it just showed a blank terminal. It didn't have any of the print like the image you posted. and I still do not have the nRF sniffer for 802.15.4 protocol listed in wireshark.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 08:49:43 GMT

Hi David,

Sorry for the slow response. To verify that the serial communication is working, could you try connecting to it with a serial client such as putty as shown in the screenshot below? You can press the tab button on your keyboard to display the commands.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 03:58:01 GMT

Hi Vidar, I tried looking around the internet for some ideas about where to go with this issue, but I couldn't find anything that sounded promising. Have you had any new ideas?

thanks

David

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 20:20:15 GMT

As a note, the folders open and behave normally without having looked into it I'm assuming the RuntimeErrors are related to the caja gui. I could be totally wrong about that though.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 20:12:34 GMT

OK, I got the '\r' issue resolved, I tried running each of the python scripts individually to see if there was a particular one that was causing the error but none of them gave that error. So I ran -

apt install dos2unix

sudo dos2unix '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/extcap/nrf802154_sniffer.py'

sudo dos2unix '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/extcap/nrf_sniffer_ble.py'

and after this

sudo wireshark
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'

However, even after running 'Capture > Refresh Interfaces', exiting and restarting wireshark I'm still not seeing any protocol for the nrf52840.

I was just about to get listings of the extcap folders to make sure I'm not missing anything and found something else that could be of interest. When I run 'sudo wireshark' I get 'QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root''

Then no further terminal output until I open the extcap folder from 'Help > About Wireshark > Folders' then I get

13:57:54.817 Main Warn QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
RuntimeError: object at 0x7f70b405f380 of type RenameMenu is not initialized
RuntimeError: object at 0x7f70b40acbc0 of type FolderColorMenu is not initialized

then if I open the SnifferAPI folder in the extcap folder I get

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/caja-python/extensions/dejadup.py", line 156, in get_file_items
include_paths = self.dejadup.get_dejadup_paths('include-list')
File "/usr/share/caja-python/extensions/dejadup.py", line 70, in get_dejadup_paths
paths = ast.literal_eval([stdout][0]) # Convert shell dump to list
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 99, in literal_eval
return _convert(node_or_string)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 98, in _convert
return _convert_signed_num(node)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 75, in _convert_signed_num
return _convert_num(node)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 66, in _convert_num
_raise_malformed_node(node)
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/ast.py", line 63, in _raise_malformed_node
raise ValueError(f'malformed node or string: {node!r}')
ValueError: malformed node or string: b"['$HOME']\n"
RuntimeError: object at 0x7f70b405f380 of type RenameMenu is not initialized
RuntimeError: object at 0x7f70b40acbc0 of type FolderColorMenu is not initialized

That being said, I have the following contents for the global extcap folder

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/extcap$ ls
androiddump dpauxmon nrf_sniffer_ble.py sdjournal sshdump
ciscodump nrf802154_sniffer.py randpktdump SnifferAPI udpdump

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 06:49:55 GMT

Yes, the missing pyserial dependency was reported when you tried Python2. I'm not sure either why '\r' is appended to the line, would it make sense to try this in another text editor? The nrf_serial_ble.py script for the BLE sniffer has the exact same line and that is apparently working fine on your setup ( #!/usr/bin/env python3)

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 03:30:05 GMT

It does have pyserial installed for python3, and it works with the Bluetooth protocols. I'm not sure what '\r' I would need to delete, the header for the script is '#!/usr/bin/env python3'.

Thanks for all the help Vidar!

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 06:58:30 GMT

Hi David,

[quote user="david613"]/usr/bin/env: ‘python3\r’: No such file or directory[/quote]

Looks like this is the problem. Can you try editing the py script again and remove the '\r' at the end. I forgot to mention earlier that I also had to change from 'python' to 'python3' in the script.

And it looks like it's failing with python2 because it does not have the 'pyserial' dependency installed.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:42:29 GMT

Hi Vidar,

When I run it from terminal I get the following

sudo wireshark
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
from: too many arguments
/usr/bin/env: ‘python3\r’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/env: ‘python3\r’: No such file or directory
from: too many arguments

running it without sudo gets many more, but they seem to all be permissions issues as expected. I looked through the GUI System Log Viewer but didn't see anything that seems related at all. If there's a specific log to check let me now and I can have a look.

I did have the idea that since Ubuntu 20 seems like it does not parse python as either python2 or python3, I checked the header of sudo '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/extcap/nrf802154_sniffer.py' and it was originally just python. I changed it to python3 and it didn't seem to change anything, when I tried changing it to python2 I got this

sudo wireshark
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/extcap/nrf802154_sniffer.py", line 62, in <module>
from serial import Serial, serialutil
ImportError: No module named serial
from: too many arguments
/usr/bin/env: ‘python3\r’: No such file or directory
from: too many arguments
/usr/bin/env: ‘python3\r’: No such file or directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/extcap/nrf802154_sniffer.py", line 62, in <module>
from serial import Serial, serialutil
ImportError: No module named serial

so it does seem like it is accessing the nrf802154_sniffer.py file.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 07:57:25 GMT

Hi David,

Can you try opening wireshark from the terminal and see if any errors are logged. I tested this now on my setup which is also running Ubuntu 20 (LTS)

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 17:45:37 GMT

Hi Vidar, I did that, and it does show up as /dev/ttyACM0 but there is still no protocol listed for it in wireshark, with only a mouse dongle and the nrf dongle plugged in when I open wireshark there are 3 that show activity, but the same 3 show the same activity without the nrf dongle plugged in. The 2 that are closest in terms of name are 'nflog' (no activity) and 'nfqueue' (also no activity), although I don't think those are actually related since it is nf and not nrf. From previously installing the Bluetooth LE protocol things it's not doing anything when I move the python scripts to the extcap folder and refresh the devices. I tried moving the entire nRF-Sniffer-for-802.15.4 folder into the extcap folder then running 'sudo python3 setup.py install' and it seems sucessful but made no differences, I also tried only moving the nrf802154_sniffer.py file, and moving the nrf802154_sniffer.py and __init__.py files to the folder. None of these got any new activity on the menu of protocols on the open page of wireshark.

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:46:33 GMT

Hi David,

Please try to program nrf802154_sniffer_dongle.hex from the latest release tagged with v0.7.2. It seems like there may be a problem with the one on Master. The green led should start to blink once you have programmed it. You should also see a new ttyACMx device popping up when the dongle is plugged in (ls /dev/ttyACM*)

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

david613 — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 03:48:42 GMT

Thanks for the response Vidar, yes I have done both of those, changing the user permissions didn't make any difference that I could tell. From setting up the Bluetooth LE dongle from Adafruit I did find out that running wireshark as sudo can make a difference but, it does not do anything to the protocols to choose from.

The python file is in the excap folder, and has its permission set to allow executing as a program, I hit the 'refresh interfaces' button in the capture menu, but I'm still not getting the selection for 'nRF Sniffer for 802.15.4'. I really don't know what I missed, I did the j-link and command line tools. I'm just stuck right now.

Thanks for any help,

David

RE: nrf52840 failure with connect desktop and wireshark

Vidar Berg — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 11:52:30 GMT

Hi David,

Have you tried running Wireshark as root, or have you changed the user permission for Wireshar as suggested in the install guide (ref. Installing Wireshark and extcap plugin)? It sounds like you have done everything else correctly. The programming log looks as expected.

Best regards,

Vidar