Adapting ble_app_blinky_c to work with nRF52840 Dongle

[gfmoore]

Using this \nRF5_SDK_17.0.2_d674dde\examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_blinky and nRF5_SDK_17.0.2_d674dde\examples\ble_central\ble_app_blinky_c

As described in \examples\ble_central\ble_app_blinky_c 

I am using win 10, VS Code and a Dongle!!!

The \examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_blinky works fine and I can use the Android app BlinkyTest to flash the dongle (using nrfutil, not nrfjprog) to test it and it works ok, so I assume I have a working toolchain.

Basically I want to make one dongle (the server, aka ble_app_blinky) turn the light on and off on the other dongle (the client akak ble_app_blinky_c)  (and for the server to recognise that a button was pressed on the client dongle). At least that is how I read the documentation says it should work.

I realise that I will have to make adjustments to at least main.c to re-assign the leds and buttons, but first I need to get the thing to build.

Because you don't have a dongle version of the examples\ble_central\ble_app_blinky_c I am trying to adapt it to work with the dongle pca10059. To do this I have copied over the code from the pca10056 folder. I have adjusted the Makefile and c_cpp_properties.json which tells the compiler where to look for the include files. (I am a bit of a noob with C, but I'm getting there).

So my first problem is that I am getting problems with intellisense telling me that in main.c

90  NRF_BLE_SCAN_DEF(m_scan);

and some other stuff isn't defined.        

So if I go to the definition I locate nrf_ble_scan.h   I have referenced this in my include files

However, at about line 137 I am getting a strange error where it is saying it doesn't like a "const"!!!

typedef struct

{

    ble_gap_scan_params_t const * p_scan_param;    

And at this point I'm stuck.

I'm assuming that ble_gap_scan_params_t

 is defined somewhere, but the IDE is telling me that it is defined in 17 out of 20 files. I'm thinking I'm on a lost trail here.

Any ideas please.

By the way any thoughts on what else I might need to look at (like removing any Segger stuff) that I should consider?

Of course the ideal solution for me would be for Nordic to provide an actual version for the dongle!!!!! I mean, you sell it after all

Thanks

Gordon.

[gfmoore]

So, I seem to be narrowing down on the issue (perhaps).

If I go to the definition for "params" in the offending line in main.c

err_code = sd_ble_gap_conn_param_update(p_gap_evt->conn_handle,

                                        &p_gap_evt->params.conn_param_update_request.conn_params);

I go to ble_gap.h

However on closer examination and by fluke I noted this was referring to the soft device s112 headers and not s140 which is the sd I need for pca10059. So I think I need to fix how this wrong reference is occurring.

[gfmoore]

Yay O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I have slain the Jabberwock!!!

So, all of these issues resolved down to VS Code deciding to search all kinds of paths looking for include files. I have quite a few projects which I cloned from Github that contained various versions of the nRF sdk rather than one.

So I removed all my includes from c_cpp_properties.json, removed the unused soft devices from the sdk leaving just s140 and the within VS Code ran the command: "Reset IntelliSense Database"  (Use F1 or ctrl+shift+p).

Then I slowly re-introduced my include paths ending up with:

            "includePath": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/pca10059/s140/config/**",

                "C:/nRF52840/nRF5_SDK_17.0.2_d674dde/components/**",
                "C:/nRF52840/nRF5_SDK_17.0.2_d674dde/modules/**",

                "${env:GNU_GCC}/**"
            ],

The errors have now all gone and I can get on with trying to understand the code.

Hope this helps someone 

Gordon

This can be closed now.

[JONATHAN LL]

Thanks for keeping the post up to date, great work!

Regards,
Jonathan

[gfmoore]

Spoke too soon, but here is a better list of defines that I grabbed by downloading and installing Segger SES and looking through the pre-processor options

            "defines": [
                "APP_TIMER_V2",
                "APP_TIMER_V2_RTC1_ENABLED",
                "BOARD_PCA10059",
                "CONFIG_GPIO_AS_PINRESET",
                "FLOAT_ABI_HARD",
                "INITIALIZE_USER_SECTIONS",
                "NO_VTOR_CONFIG",
                "NRF52840_XXAA",
                "NRF_SD_BLE_API_VERSION=7",
                "S140",
                "SOFTDEVICE_PRESENT"
            ],

There is another one as well: "NDEBUG" which I think is for release code.

I have opened another ticket on how to locate the documentation which tells us what defines we should consider as I am not certain this is an exhaustive list, but at least I'm not getting any VS Code "PROBLEMS" with intellisense on any opened files.

[JONATHAN LL]

Thanks again for keeping this updated,

As fare as I am aware, look at the example you want to reference and take a peek at the makefile to see what defines are there.


Then add the info to the json file in VSC, so that the .json and makfile match

Regards,
Jonathan

[gfmoore]

Oh, okay. I guess I just remove the D! 

Thanks.