Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 12:39:08 GMT

Hello Simon, I just tested it with the options you mentioned and it finally works! Thanks a lot for your help.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 12:28:48 GMT

I was able to make this work* by setting these at the nrf9160 host side (ncs\v1.4.0\nrf\samples\bluetooth\nrf91_bluetooth_host\prj.conf):

CONFIG_BT_HCI_VS=y
CONFIG_BT_HCI_VS_EXT=y

Can you check if you're able to make it work as well?

Set SW5 to nRF52 and run nrfjprog --memrd 0x100000A4 --n 8 and check that the output is the same as the advertising address.

*For outside readers: Automatically advertise with the address stored in the register DEVICEADDR on the nRF9160 DK, where the nRF9160 operates as the host and the nRF52840 operates as the controller

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:09:08 GMT

I'll put off some time Tuesday/Wednesday and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 15:56:20 GMT

Hi Simon, any update on this?

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 15:06:31 GMT

Sorry for the delay on this. I've been gone lately due to vacation. I have filed a report on this internally. I will keep you updated on the progress. However, I'll be gone until the 4th of January and I won't be able to provide an answer until then.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 11:17:51 GMT

Simon, I know its a Christmas time now. But could you at least report this as a bug so it gets fixed by some of your developers? I am pretty sure this should work out of the box for split controller + host. I mean it should behave the same as it is running on a single chip with host & controller which is not the case right now.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 07:20:23 GMT

Hello Simon,

BT_LE_ADV_OPT_USE_IDENTITY does nothing. You can try it yourself by replacing line 77 by

struct bt_le_adv_param *adv_param =	BT_LE_ADV_PARAM(BT_LE_ADV_OPT_CONNECTABLE | BT_LE_ADV_OPT_USE_NAME | BT_LE_ADV_OPT_USE_IDENTITY,
			BT_GAP_ADV_FAST_INT_MIN_2, BT_GAP_ADV_FAST_INT_MAX_2, NULL);

err = bt_le_adv_start(adv_param, ad, ARRAY_SIZE(ad), NULL, 0);

As I said in the beginning, I don't understand the stack. However, I think it's "too late" to set something in the advertisement options. From my point of view, there must be something messed up in the stack when settngs_load() is called. Could someone from your team inspect it, please?

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 10:29:33 GMT

Coud you try using the option BT_LE_ADV_OPT_USE_IDENTITY?

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:10:09 GMT

Okay, I will ask about this internally.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:04:45 GMT

I guess for most users, it is preferred to get it automatically by Zephyr from the registers you specified. For us, it is also the easiest option.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 12:59:49 GMT

I asked internally about this and got tipsed about setting CONFIG_PRIVACY=n and to use bt_set_id_addr(). However I was not able to make this work. Before investigating further I would like to clarify something: Are you interested in setting the MAC address yourself using bt_set_id_addr(), or would you like it to get set automatically by Zephyr (using the values in NRF_FICR->DEVICEADDR[])?

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 10:42:38 GMT

Thanks for the message and your time debugging this issue.. To be honest with you, I already gave up. It's too complex for me.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 10:40:45 GMT

I'm sorry for the delay on this, I'll just tell you that I'm still looking into this and eager to get to the bottom of it.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 22:46:24 GMT

Simon, great to hear from you. Unfortunately, I must say that my knowledge ends up here. I have no idea how to debug this further as I see no error in the code.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:12:53 GMT

I tried to investigate this a little, and think I made some progress. The value of id_addr->a was consistent and always the same after each reset. However, the value of addr changed every time, and this value was equal to the one I saw in the nRF Connect Mobile phone app. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe because the variable is stored inside a local scope or something? I did not get time to get any further today, but will continue tomorrow. Maybe you are able to figure this out?

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 13:13:27 GMT

Oh man! I took this one from our main application where we have CONFIG_BT_WAIT_NOP=n and it was working. And I have probably overlooked trying to set this one to y as it is in the LTE BLE Gateway sample. Sorry about that.

So the first issue is now fixed, thanks a lot. Now to the second one, I am still unable to have a static mac address kept on the nRF9160 host after reset.

Steps to reproduce:

Flash the hci_uart sample to nRF52840 on nRF9160DK
Flash my simple sample code from https://github.com/lukasbrchl/nrf91_bluetooth_host to nRF9160 on nRF9160DK
Observe in nRF Connect on a mobile phone that MAC address changes on each restart.

Log from nRF9160 host:

00> [00:00:00.000,274] <inf> main: Bluetooth trying to init
00> [00:00:00.002,929] <inf> fs_nvs: 2 Sectors of 4096 bytes
00> [00:00:00.003,204] <inf> fs_nvs: alloc wra: 0, fd8
00> [00:00:00.003,479] <inf> fs_nvs: data wra: 0, 1c
00> [00:00:00.600,616] <wrn> bt_hci_core: opcode 0x0000 pool id 5 pool 0x20010580 != &hci_cmd_pool 0x20010558
00> [00:00:00.621,856] <wrn> bt_hci_core: ECC HCI commands not available
00> [00:00:00.622,161] <inf> bt_hci_core: No ID address. App must call settings_load()
00> [00:00:00.622,528] <inf> main: Bluetooth initialized
00> [00:00:00.624,877] <inf> bt_hci_core: Identity: fd:2a:5f:e1:bf:c6 (random)
00> [00:00:00.625,244] <inf> bt_hci_core: HCI: version 5.2 (0x0b) revision 0x1123, manufacturer 0x0059
00> [00:00:00.625,671] <inf> bt_hci_core: LMP: version 5.2 (0x0b) subver 0x1123

From my point of view, the host expects the MAC address from the nRF52 controller, but don't get it. I also tried to set some configs in the controller but it doesn't work (and it doesn't make sense).

Configs added in hci_uart sample that won't help.

CONFIG_BT_SETTINGS=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_PAGE_LAYOUT=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_NVS=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS=y

I think this is a bug somewhere and I am unable to debug it further. It would really help us if you could also inspect this one.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 11:20:22 GMT

Try setting CONFIG_BT_WAIT_NOP=y in the prj.conf of your project (https://github.com/lukasbrchl/nrf91_bluetooth_host). I tested it just now and it solved the issue.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 11:09:21 GMT

I tried to inspect some yesterday, and I had to go back all the way to NCS v.0.3.0 to find a hci_uart that worked with your sample. However, in that version of NCS, west was not introduced yet, which makes it hard to work with.

I will investigate more today/tomorrow.

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Lukáš — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 10:45:42 GMT

Hi Simon,

ok, looking forward to your thoughts. Yesterday, I was again inspecting it for a few more hours but haven't been able to find the issue.

Lukas

RE: Bluetooth split stack issues with nRF91 and nRF52 in NCS

Simon — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 07:51:50 GMT

I'll look into this today/tomorrow and try to reproduce the problem.

Best regards,

Simon