How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 12:47:31 GMT

Hey,
I tried the example with actual DK, and it works pretty fine. Next I ported it from PCA10056 to PCA10059 and it works fine too. Finally I found solution for my requirements. Now I just need to adjust the examples to my project (just to switch from Nordic UART Service to my custom service) and establish comunication between DK and Dongle, but if I had any extraordinary problem I would start a new thread on the forum.
Thank you a lot for patience, lots of useful information about all those Nordic's tool.
After all those experiences, I think that whole Nordic's stuff for BLE etc. needs some extra simple explanations for rookies who have no much experience and feel confused about at the beggining. It's always way much easier when you have a tutor who introduces you into basics and some important details.
And again, thank you a lot. Seems you have another satisfied egnineer who's gonna recommend Nordic for radio applications :)

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Håkon Alseth — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:50:19 GMT

Hi,

[quote user="Kubek"]Anyway - since the sillicon in Preview-DK and actual DK (and the packages sold for soldering on PCB as well, I think) are different, is this a bad idea to use Preview-DK for prototyping? I will have to design a device with a button, a few LEDs, ADC and BLE.[/quote]

It is a strong recommendation to use the same silicon version as you're planning to go into production with.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 08:10:18 GMT

Okey, so I will try to port example from PCA10056 to PCA10059 on my dongle and program it via NRF Connect Programmer app.

It's uplifting that this example should work fine and CDC USB is what I'm looking for - it should appear as a regular COM port.

Anyway - since the sillicon in Preview-DK and actual DK (and the packages sold for soldering on PCB as well, I think) are different, is this a bad idea to use Preview-DK for prototyping? I will have to design a device with a button, a few LEDs, ADC and BLE.

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Håkon Alseth — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 07:46:16 GMT

Hi,

[quote user="Kubek"]And yes, my DK is Preview one. Does that might be issue?[/quote]

Yes, this is problematic. Preview kit has older engineering silicon, which isn't supported in the SDK.

[quote user="Kubek"]

Finally, I want to make an application for dongle, not DK - can I just port that example above to PCA100059 and it should work fine? I guess "nRF USB" from DK is quite the same as regular only exiisting USB in dongle?

[/quote]

The dongle does not have a dedicated programmer, but instead uses a bootloader. You will have to adapt the project for PCA10059, as described in this guide (see section with softdevice):

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/short-range-guides/b/getting-started/posts/nrf52840-dongle-programming-tutorial

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 06:02:32 GMT

I use Ubuntu 20.04, and I had installed "catch2" before, according to:
https://github.com/etaler/Etaler/issues/33

It didn't help me much. If I remember correctly, then I installed "clang-tidy" and wasn't sure if made it correctly (I described it 13 days ago).
Anyway, I installed "groovy", because it was on the list of packages that might include "catch2". It didn't help too.

I tried "usbd_ble_uart" example (on DK, not dongle yet) and I'm confused. Firstly, I attached only "main USB" cable and DK appeared as COM8. And CDC ACM was unavailable. Once I connected "nRF USB" too, logs claimed that USB is ready, but there was no another COM ports available, and logs from handling data recevied via Nordic UART Service claim that CDC ACM is still unavailable.

I checked in Windows' Device Manager, and seems there's problem with that another USB:

It's unknown USB device (descriptor request failed).

I checked that issue here:

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/59010/unknown-usb-device-device-descriptor-request-failed-with-nrf-usb-port-after-sniffer-firmware

And yes, my DK is Preview one. Does that might be issue?

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Håkon Alseth — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 14:07:32 GMT

Hi,

it looks like your system does not have catch2 (it is in ubuntu 20.10 and newer):

https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&keywords=catch2&searchon=names

[quote user="Kubek"]I meant "\examples\heart_rate_collector" from "pc-ble-driver" repository, not a nRF SDK examples. But you may suggest any working example from SDK too. If only it's gonna work for me :D [/quote]

Based on your former description, you want to get bluetooth data printed to your PC. The examples that I posted are USB CDC (ie. usb->uart bridge), and one of them even implements BLE UART + USB CDC. Have you tried the usbd_ble_peripheral example in the nRF5 SDK to see if it fits your requirement?

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 13:34:32 GMT

Without -G:

With -G:

2) I meant "\examples\heart_rate_collector" from "pc-ble-driver" repository, not a nRF SDK examples. But you may suggest any working example from SDK too. If only it's gonna work for me :D

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Håkon Alseth — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 07:48:03 GMT

Hi,

[quote user="Kubek"]cmake -G Ninja ..[/quote]

This generates ninja files: https://ninja-build.org/

To generate gnu makefiles, just omit the "-G" and it will default back to makefiles.

[quote user="Kubek"]but it brings me back to problem with ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR[/quote]

Did you install libasio-dev?

[quote user="Kubek"]2) Does "printf" function from example above send data via USB? Because that's what I'm looking for - to receive data via BLE and redirect them to VCOM on my PC.[/quote]

Did you have a look at the nRF5 SDK usb cdc example, or the examples/peripheral/usbd_ble_uart?

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 20:34:10 GMT

1) Suppose I want to use "heart_rate_collector" example (from "\examples\heart_rate_collector" of "pc-ble-driver" repository) - just to compile the .hex file. What am I supposed to do?
I tried to follow the "Getting started with examples" from:

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/tree/master/examples

but it brings me back to problem with ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR, because I have to:

cmake -G Ninja ..

due to no makefile in "build/examples" directory. I'm more and more confused.
2) Does "printf" function from example above send data via USB? Because that's what I'm looking for - to receive data via BLE and redirect them to VCOM on my PC.

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Håkon Alseth — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 10:14:57 GMT

Hi,

[quote user="Kubek"]How am I supposed to compile that particular project? If I undertand correctly, GItHub instructions refer to just bare "pc-ble-driver" compilation.[/quote]

My apologies, you're right, this was a behavior change when we introduced usage of vcpkg. we do not have examples on how to link in with precompiled libs. For building on windows, you need quite a lot of deps sorted out, as described here:

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver#installing-dependencies-on-windows

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver#compiling-pc-ble-driver-on-windows

On linux, you need to install these deps:

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver#compiling-pc-ble-driver-on-ubuntu-linux-or-macos

Alternatively, you can omit using vcpkg and install the deps via apt:

apt install libasio-dev libspdlog-dev catch2 cmake build-essential

An alternative can also be to use pc-ble-driver-py or pc-ble-driver-js.

[quote user="Kubek"]In my opinion, all that "pc-ble-driver" stuff is kinda chaotic or just not described simple enough, that makes me spend much time understanding what this thing is, how works, and how to use it for my own project. In perfect world, I would make no forum thread for it, and just be satisfied with instructions. [/quote]

I agree with you that we can definitely improve in this matter. I'll have a chat with the team related to this topic.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 17:17:16 GMT

I wasn't aware of precompiled binaries, because I was on "master" branch, and they are available only in "relase-x.y" ones.
Anyway, I programmed my dongle with it ("connectivity_4.1.4_usb_with_s140_6.1.1.hex"), and seems that my COM14 has 2 VCOMs - 0 and 1:

As I expected VCOM1 to be for USB-UART feature, I tried to read data from it, but no matter which baudrate I set, I always receive same sign set (that seems to be some kind of special frame that signals trying to connect somewhere, I guess). I'm kinda confused, because I was pretty sure that Dongle would appear as COM1, not "sub-COM" of COM14.

And there's another riddle to solve. Well, I see two examples available - the Heart Rate Collector seems to be the one I need (because I want to redirect some data from BLE characteristic to UART, so I just need to simply edit this one). How am I supposed to compile that particular project? If I undertand correctly, GItHub instructions refer to just bare "pc-ble-driver" compilation.

In my opinion, all that "pc-ble-driver" stuff is kinda chaotic or just not described simple enough, that makes me spend much time understanding what this thing is, how works, and how to use it for my own project. In perfect world, I would make no forum thread for it, and just be satisfied with instructions. But maybe I'm the one who's not as clever as most of Nordic's users :D

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Håkon Alseth — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 08:13:18 GMT

Hi,

Is there a specific reason why you're building from source?

Precompiled binaries are available here:

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/releases

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:56:15 GMT

Anyway I tried it my way - to install some things according to tips from forums. Then occured an error:
I fixed it with: (because there was a Python script with no .py extension).

/bin$ sudo cp run-clang-tidy run-clang-tidy.py

But these were another files: run-clang-tidy-10 and run-clang-tidy-10.py. Maybe they were proper ones because another error occured:

Maybe I should rather replace it with this file:

https://github.com/llvm-mirror/clang-tools-extra/blob/master/clang-tidy/tool/run-clang-tidy.py

Anyway, problem seems to be with no ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR.

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Kubek — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 17:59:17 GMT

I tried it on Windows 10 - it's just a one big trouble generator, so I tried to do this on Ubuntu 20.04.

Once I tried to:

cmake -G Ninja .. 

An error occurs:

So I tried to install Ninja (because some Stack Overflow thread claimed that might be reason):

sudo apt install ninja-build

After this, I tried again to cmake:

cmake -G Ninja ..

But yet another complex error occured:

What might be the reason? I don't want to randomly follow each possible forum's tips, because I'm under impression it's gonna just mix everything up. Anyway I tried once, and it didn't help. I thought everything is gonna work fine if only I had followed the steps.

RE: How to use USB in nRF52840 Dongle as UART?

Simonr — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 13:38:06 GMT

Please check out this thread, which has quite a few suggestions on how you can use the nRF52 Dongle as a serial port.

Best regards,

Simon