slow BLE button repeat rate nRF52840 to Android and Windows

[Gary Doherty]

Hi,

I am new to the Nordic Semi world, having recently purchased a nRF52840 DK board and a nRF52840 dongle.

I have programmed an Arduino Nano 33 IoT over BLE and when I repeatedly press a button, set as Notify, the change in button states appear on nRF Connect as expected.

No matter how fast I press/release the button, the state changes are correctly shown in nRF Connect.

This is also the case when I connect the Nano to 'BLE Scanner' on Android and to  a c# program I have written, running on Windows 10.

I'm using nRF5 SDK v17.0.2

Using the nRF_sdk/examples/ble_peripheral/ble_app_blinky, I can only see the state changes if I press and release the button relatively slowly (e.g. slower than about 500ms). Any faster and button state changes are not reliably shown. The same happens on both the DK board and the dongle.

In debug mode, I have put ' NRF_LOG_INFO' calls to see what happens and 'button_event_handler()' is called correctly on every button transition, so the problem is not with the button event handler calling mechanism.

Any ideas how I can speed up the BLE notification to nRF Connect?

Thanks

[Simonr]

Hi

I discussed this with a colleague, and we see no reason that if both devices use notifications to transmit these events, and that the button_event_handler() is also trigged that the NANO and DK shouldn't behave similarly.

On my end it seems to work fine and that the events are sent and received as intended as long as I don't press faster than the detection delay.

Can you provide a sniffer trace of the DK where the notifications are not received, and one of the NANO where the events are received, so we can confirm whether the notifications are actually transmitted, as they seem to be on our end at least. You can use the nRFSniffer to take this sniffer trace with Wireshark seeing as you have both a Dongle and a DK.

If they are transmitted, but not received correctly, it might be relevant what Android device you're using as the BLE scanner as well. Have you tried more than one Android device for scanning/central role? What device is this?

Best regards,

Simon

[Gary Doherty]

Thanks - I'll give the sniffer a try out

I've also connected the Nano, DK & Dongle to Win10 in a central role. I get the same results as with Android, so I don't think the problem is at the receiver end.

I'll post the sniffer results as so as I get a chance to run it