How to enable and disable all interrupts ?

[Milan]

Hi Team,

Is there any way to enable/disable all interrupts? Will BLE connection get disconnected because of this? If yes the what are the possible ways to maintain the connection?

[RK]

1. Is there a way to enable/disable all interrupts. Yes, set primask. There's a __disable_irq() and an __enable_irq() macro to do that .. however
2. Will BLE connection get disconnected because of this? Yes, it will, perhaps not instantly, perhaps not every time. The longer you have them disabled, the more likely the SD will break that time but even if you have them disabled for a really, really short time, it will eventually and randomly break. So don't use the __disable_irq() or attempt to disable all interrupts. It will not work.
3. What are the possible ways to maintain the connection? Don't disable all interrupts is the way to maintain the connection. You can use the sd_nvic_critical_region_enter()/exit() functions to turn off all interrupts the softdevice isn't using. That is the most you can do.

What problem are you actually trying to solve?

[RK]

1. no
2. read the softdevice docs, it's in there
3. it's 'lose' not 'loose'. If you're using flow control then you won't lose any bytes but you could get very backed up.

using a separate UART chip is a much better idea here - I've looked before and there's a few and they are quite cheap. I think it's possible to make the timeslot api work but it would be very hard.

Also Nordic is releasing its new NRF52 in a couple of weeks, I have no idea whether that will have more peripherals on it or be better able to deal with simultaneous operations. I'm hoping it will, but have zero information.