OpenThread Daemon Not Running on OTBR with Raspberry Pi and nrf52840 dongle - following tutorial "Developing Matter products with nRF Connect SDK"

[Oide Brett]

Hi.

I am following the tutorial "Developing Matter products with nRF Connect SDK" but having problems getting the openthread border router working with the raspberry pi 3B+ and the NRF52840 dongle.

I have compiled the code for the OT coprocessor (nrf52840 dongle) and flashed it using nrfutil from my linux machine. I have inserted the dongle into my raspberry pi and followed the instructions to set up the OTBR border router. I can see the web interface to the OTBR on the ip address for the raspberry pi. I have changed the obtr-agent service file to reference the particular device path for my nrf52840 dongle.

However, I am getting an error when restarting the otbr-agent and otbr-web service.

The otbr agent service logs say

Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/otbr-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2022-01-06 20:39:49 GMT; 671ms ago
  Process: 4433 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/otbr-agent $OTBR_AGENT_OPTS (code=exited, status=6)
 Main PID: 4433 (code=exited, status=6)

and the otbr web service logs say

Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Border Router Web.
Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi otbr-web[3265]: otbr-web[3265]: [INFO]-WEB-----: Running 0.3.0-e149a60eb
Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi otbr-web[3265]: otbr-web[3265]: [INFO]-WEB-----: Border router web started on wpan0
Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi otbr-web[3265]: otbr-web[3265]: [ERR ]-WEB-----: OpenThread daemon is not running.
Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi otbr-web[3265]: [INFO]-WEB-----: Running 0.3.0-e149a60eb
Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi otbr-web[3265]: [INFO]-WEB-----: Border router web started on wpan0
Jan 06 20:20:15 raspberrypi otbr-web[3265]: [ERR ]-WEB-----: OpenThread daemon is not running.

my otbr-agent file in /etc/default is

OTBR_AGENT_OPTS="-I wpan0 -B eth0 spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/serial/by-id/usb-Nordic_Semiconductor_ASA_Thread_Co-Processor_53337C5A523AF3F1-if00?uart-reset trel://eth0"

Any ideas where I could start to debug this error?

Thanks in advance

Oide

[Oide Brett]

Thanks Sigurd,

I am very new to using the Nrf52840 dongle on the raspberry pi so I appreciate your patience.

I used the journalctl -xe command and found the following:

-- The job identifier is 8023.
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [INFO]-UTILS---: Running 0.3.0-e149a60eb
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [INFO]-UTILS---: Thread version: 1.2.0
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [INFO]-UTILS---: Thread interface: wpan0
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [INFO]-UTILS---: Backbone interface: eth0
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [INFO]-UTILS---: Radio URL: spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/serial/by-id/usb-Nordic_Semiconductor_ASA_Thread_Co-Processor_53337C5A523AF3F1-if00?uart-reset
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [INFO]-UTILS---: Radio URL: trel://eth0
Jan 06 20:47:14 raspberrypi sudo[1529]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 06 20:47:18 raspberrypi otbr-agent[1532]: [CRIT]-PLAT----: HandleRcpTimeout() at ../../third_party/openthread/repo/src/lib/spinel/radio_spinel_impl.hpp:2202: RadioSpinelNoResponse
Jan 06 20:47:18 raspberrypi systemd[1]: otbr-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=6/NOTCONFIGURED
-- Subject: Unit process exited
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
--
-- An ExecStart= process belonging to unit otbr-agent.service has exited.
--
-- The process' exit code is 'exited' and its exit status is 6.
Jan 06 20:47:18 raspberrypi systemd[1]: otbr-agent.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
-- Subject: Unit failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
--
-- The unit otbr-agent.service has entered the 'failed' state with result 'exit-code'.

Do you have any idea what the RadipSpinelNoResponse is caused by and how I could fix it? I have inserted the dongle into the raspberry pi port.

Thanks in advance

Ivo

[Sigurd Hellesvik]

Hi

The RapidSpinelNoResponse means that the Raspberry Pi is not able to communicate successfully with the dongle.

In your log, I see that you have:

Oide Brett said:

Radio URL: spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/serial/by-id/usb-Nordic_Semiconductor_ASA_Thread_Co-Processor_53337C5A523AF3F1-if00?uart-reset

From the guide I linked, see that :
"
After the Build and install OTBR section, configure RCP device’s UART baud rate in otbr-agent. Modify the /etc/default/otbr-agent configuration file with default RCP baud rate:

spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/ttyACM0?uart-baudrate=1000000
"

The /dev/ttyACM0 depends on which com-port your Dongle has been given.

I realize that I linked the wrong site in by below Thread Tools - Thread Border Router. I have now edited it to show the correct link.
Please double check that the steps you performed for setup is correct.

Regards,
Sigurd Hellesvik