Connect a Laptop with Windows to Peripheral UART example

[StefiNR]

Sure, my question is very stupid, but after one day I found nothing to explain the principle of the situation, I decided to ask.

I have a laptop with built-in Bluetooth 5.2 and Windows 11. It runs a terminal testing program.

I have nRF5340 DK with the example Peripheral UART installed (nRF Connect SDK1.8.0). The board works normally, I tested it with a phone with Android and nRF Connect for Mobile. Everything is working fine. The board is connected to a desktop computer on which a terminal program is running and connected to COM port ( not USB).

Windows (laptop), sees the board. After pressing adding device (on Win), the LED on the board (connected) lights up for 1 second, Windows thinks about 5 seconds, and says try again. I imagine that it will connect to the board, and a window will appear to install a serial port to which I can connect through the terminal program. No PIN display window appears. I tried to quickly press button 1, possibly to confirm, nothing. I can transmit data over the phone without the board being BONDED. Let me just say that I've been doing Nordic for 6 months, and I've learned some things. But here I can't even imagine what should happen. Google didn't help either. Does anything else need to be installed on the board?

In the final version, it should be a remote device to which with any laptop with Bluetooth 5.2, to be able to connect and through a terminal program to exchange data via serial port.

[Simonr]

Below are my answers to what I picked up as questions from your latest reply. Let me know if I missed some, or if you have further questions. Please note that it's easier to catch them all if you list your specific questions. Also, since this case has moved on from it's initial topic, I would recommend that you create a new DevZone ticket if you have a new issue or require technical support on a different topic.

nRF5340 DK COM ports: COM ports you're seeing are UART0, UART1, and you can choose from the device manager which ones you want to use in I.E. a terminal. 

peripheral_uart sample: This sample data received on the RX pin of the UART0 peripheral to the BLE unit. By default, the UART 0 peripheral is gated through the interface MCU to connector J2. To make use of the USB peripheral instead I would suggest checking out the HCI USB sample in Zephyr instead, which is designed to make a USB Bluetooth Dongle from Zephyr.

Your use case: I understand it as the "remotes" you mention will be nRF5340 devices, correct? And you want to transmit data from these devices over BLE to the computers, which will forward that data to a USB device, correct? Forgive me if I misunderstand anything. The transmission speed (throughput) you mention might be an issue, depending on how many bytes you plan on transmitting at a time. As explained in this blog post, the maximum throughput we're able to achieve with BLE 5 will be ~1400.56 Kbits/s, but that will also depend on the BLE module on the computer's side. If that is sufficient in your case, I don't see any issue this wouldn't be possible. Will the device connected to the computer also be an nRF device? If so you can communicate directly with the nRF instead of having to go through the computer first.

Encryption should not be an issue either. The nRF53 series use the Bluetooth LE bond module for managing BLE peers and bonds. The computer generally handles this by "choosing" pairing when you connect to a device I believe.

Best regards,

Simon

[StefiNR]

So much on this topic here. I accept that you have answered everything that interests me. Thank you for your cooperation.

 

Regarding the COM port of nRF5340DK. The description is wrong. It's not about the USB port to the computer at all. I connected a logic analyzer to monitor the communication between two boards. Good thing it was the Altium project to find out where to connect my analyzer. Accordingly, the signal passes through other switches, etc. According to the wiring diagram and the declaration in the project, uart0 must be connected on other pins. That's why I wrote that if someone makes a board to plug into the kit and expects the pin signals according to the wiring diagram in your documentation, he will be very badly surprised. Adjust it if you want.

 

So much here.