NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

Simonr — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 06:57:49 GMT

Merry Christmas to you to! I hope you find out what's wrong soon. Don't hesitate to ask if you need assistance!

Best regards,

Simon

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

CeDeROM — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 20:25:53 GMT

Thank you Simonr for your time effort and confirmations!! This means something needs a fix on my end :-)

Merry Christmas to You and the Team :-)

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

Simonr — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:16:56 GMT

I made it to the office today and tested the BLE nRFSniffer (v3.1.0) on a new nRF52840 Dongle and did not have any trouble adding the BLE sniffer profile to Wireshark nor finding the Dongle as an available sniffer. Please see the screenshots below. I found one step that's easy to miss during setup that might cause you to not see the sniffer device. After the necessary modifications to Wireshark is done, please make sure to enable the nRF Sniffer capture tool in Wireshark by:

1. Refresh the interfaces in Wireshark by selecting Capture > Refresh Interfaces or pressing F5. You should see that nRF Sniffer is displayed as one of the interfaces on the start page.

2. Select View > Interface Toolbars > nRF Sniffer for Bluetooth LE to enable the Sniffer interface.

For reference, I flashed the sniffer firmware onto the Dongle using the nRFConnect for Desktop Programmer application with the sniffer_nrf52840dongle_nrf52840_7cc811f.hex file.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

Simonr — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:35:17 GMT

Hi again

The COVID situation escalated again in this weekend, so I won't be able to test the sniffer firmware on the Dongle today I'm afraid, but I should be able to during the week. I did however test with an nRF52832 DK as well, and did not have any problems with installing the latest nRFSniffer firmware (v3.1.0) or flashing it onto the DK. You can see the screenshot below for reference.

I also asked around internally, and none of my colleagues have seen any issues with the latest nRFSniffer firmware and the nRF52840 Dongle. A suggestion as to what might be going on:

Have you removed the v3.0.0 Wireshark profile from Wireshark and added the latest Wireshark profile according to "Adding a Wireshark profile"?
Have you added the nRF Sniffer capture tool according to the "installation guide" here?
Please make sure that you program the correct sniffer firmware .hex file onto the Dongle. sniffer_nrf52840dongle_nrf52840_7cc811f.hex is the correct .hex file for the nRF52840 Dongle.

As far as suggestions to other sniffer solutions, I don't have any real suggestions as we generally use the nRFSniffer or Ellisys sniffer to do sniffing, neither being open-source I'm afraid.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

CeDeROM — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 14:52:57 GMT

Thank you Simonr especially for tips on configuring Wireshark for 802.15.4 sniffing, I did not see that before, I did not get there yet :-)

The problem is I cannot even connect to the DONGLE from Wireshark as it is not on the device list neither BLE nor 802.15.4. A proof that BLE and 802.15.4 Sniffer works with DONGLE would be really helpful for me to know if my configuration fails. When you guys have a free moment such verification would be great to have, thank you in advance :-)

The programming of the Dongle seems to work the same way both using nRFConnect and NRFUTIL. This is a good conclusion of our discussion.

I consider this solution to be experimental not really production ready. Can you recommend a good

out-of-the-box solution for BLE and 802.15.4 sniffing preferably low-cost and open-source?

Best regards :-)

Tomek

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

Simonr — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 13:25:50 GMT

Edvin is out of office for the time being, so I have been assigned this case while he is away. I have not yet tested v3.1.0 of the BLE sniffer as I'm working from home today and don't have the necessary equipment, but I'll do so on Monday to see if I can reproduce this issue on the nRF52832 DK and/or the nRF52840 Dongle.

The Programming the nRF Sniffer firmware page was updated for v3.1.0 of the BLE sniffer, so please make sure you've followed all the steps necessary to run the device on the nRF52840 Dongle.

The reason we don't have a public repository for our nRF Sniffer firmware is because our sniffer firmware is not open source, so a GitHub repository or source code for the nRF BLE Sniffer is not likely to be released I'm afraid.

As for your requests, I will forward them internally, but I can't guarantee that these updates will come right away:

Please check out the nRF Sniffer for 802.15.4 user guide here to see how to set up the 802.15.4 sniffer if that is interesting to you.

The necessary SoftDevice should indeed be included in the provided .hex files.

As Edvin said, he got the v3.1.0 version of the BLE sniffer to work on both an nRF52832 DK and an nRF52840 Dongle, and I myself have not had any issues with any DKs and v3.0.0. Both version 3.0.0 and 3.1.0 should work for all the supported boards, except 3.0.0 with the nRF52840 Dongle, as support was not included for this specific board in v3.0.0, so I'm guessing the root cause for these problem is somewhere else.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

CeDeROM — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 12:30:39 GMT

Different approach - does BLE and 802.15.4 sniffer firmware contain SoftDevice linked into the provided HEX file?

If SD is included into HEX, the `--sd-req` does not matter here and the sniffer should work outside of the box.

If SD is not included into HEX, then documentation should be updated and additional HEX with SoftDevice provided..?

I guess that correct SD is included into provided HEX firmware images?

Why some boards work with different firmware versions while others do not?

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

CeDeROM — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 03:51:08 GMT

Hello Edvin and thank you for all hints :-)

I have installed nrfConnect + Programmer on Windoze (yuck). Long story short DAPLink/JLink can flash boards with HIC installed, NRFUTIL can flash DFU devices without HIC where only DFU is available.

Detailed notes below:

* nRF52DK_nRF52832 works only with BLE Sniffer 3.0.0 not with 3.1.0. Newer one seems broken as described previously something shows up on the VCP but Wireshark does cannot reliably open and listen to radio traffic. It works fine with 3.0.0.

* nRF52840 DONGLE does not work. Flashed with nrfConnect gives the same results as the open-source utility NRFUTIL. Device is programmed, it shows up, led is blinking, but serial port is silent, also Wireshark does not find a device. Please note that the same configuration works fine with nRF52DK+3.0.0. Looks like a bug in sniffer firmware for DONGLE?

* nRF52840DK works fine with 3.0.0 and 3.1.0 device is visible in Wireshark and all packets are captured from radio over HIC/VCP.

My requests:

* please provide DFU ZIP files next to HEX files for DFU capable devices so they can be flashed easily with shell open-source utilities on open-source platforms where user can compile and run those applications. This includes firmware for nRF52840_DOGNLE both for BLE Sniffer as well as 802.15.4 Sniffer.

* please provide firmware files in Download section of the 802.15.4 Sniffer website [1]. As for now there is only something named nrfgostudio for windows available.

* please update file names in Release section of the 802.15.4 GitHub repository [2] so they reflect reality - provided are only binary files of the firmware not the source code.

* please provide a GitHub repository for the BLE Sniffer.

* please provide source code for both Sniffers BLE and 802.15.4.

* source codes for Sniffers are probably written in Zephyr - they would serve as a extremely valuable example and starting point for advanced applications for both nRF chips and Zephyr running on them.

Thank you :-)

Tomek

[1] www.nordicsemi.com/.../Download

[2] github.com/.../releases

RE: NRF-{BT,802154}-SNIFFER NRFUTIL nRF52840 DONGLE HEX TO DFU ZIP --SD-REQ

Edvin — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 14:42:48 GMT

Hello,

[quote user=""]What is the in depth purpose of this `--sd-req` switch?[/quote]

It is used to make sure that the correct softdevice (BLE stack) is programmed when you do an OTA (Over The Air) DFU. Imagine if you have an end product, and you roll out an update to your customers, but some customers didn't update the BLE stack (perhaps they skipped the previous update). When you update the application which was intended for a newer softdevice, the application and softdevice doesn't work together anymore. Then you may have bricked the device, because the application wouldn't be able to start advertising anymore, so you can't connect to it, and you can't update it again. It is just a failsafe. Setting --sd-req to 0x00 means that the bootloader will ignore the softdevice requirement, and accept any DFU image. As long as you have some way to program it again if something goes wrong that is fine.

Have you tried to flash the dongle with the sniffer_nrf52840dongle_nrf52840_7cc811f.hex using nRF Connect for Desktop?

If not can you please try to do so? The reason I ask you to test this is to find out whether this is an issue with your DFU setup or the wireshark/sniffer for iOS itself.

I have no issues with neither the nRF52840 dongle nor the nRF52832 DK in sniffer v3.1.0. The nRF52832 doesn't have an peripheral USB, but the .hex file doesn't use USB. It uses UART. It is the Segger programmer on the DK that translates from UART to USB.

Best regards,

Edvin