PPK Power Profiler scrolling speed is super slow (unusable)

[mchartier]

I have used the PPK several times over the last 2-3 years and it usually works fine. Today I downloaded the latest versions of the tools on two Macs: One is a 2021 Intel I9 system and the other is a 2021 M1 Mac. Both systems have plenty of RAM and no other applications running. CPU is basically idle when starting nRF Connect.

Both systems show the same problem while running the power profiler in the data logger view. The data is scrolling from right-to-left at about 1/4 speed. The scrolling is far too slow to be usable because I need to see the data in real time.

I can measure the scrolling speed by turning on the x-axis timestamps and pressing [Start] button and then stopping after four seconds. At this point the x-axis shows only about 1 second of data. Now if I unplug my DUT and press the [Start] button  again the power chart will continue to scroll from right-to-left and show data that was captured BEFORE I unplugged the DUT! It appears the data is getting captured correctly, however the tool is just not able to draw the chart fast enough to keep up with the incoming data. 

The Mac activity monitor shows the nRF Connect process running at about 130% when the profiler is running. Overall system load is 78% idle.

Here is my test environment:

PPK1 PCA63511 REV 1.1.0 2018.26

DUT is a custom board based on the nRF52840

nRF Connect for Desktop v3.10.0

Power Profiler v3.4.2

Tried two versions of JLINK:   v7.58b and v7.62

MacOS 12.1

[sirio]

I have this same issue also, but PPK2 is not in stock with either Mouser or DigiKey.

App versions tested which have this issue:

- nRF Connect 3.7.1; Power Profiler 3.1.3 (both WIndows 10 and MacOS Big Sur)

- nRFConnect 3.11.1; Power Profiler 3.4.3 (both Windows 10 and MacOS Big Sur)

The Power Profiler samples ~1.3sec of data in 5sec of wall time

The only instructions I could find for downgrading nRF Connect apps is here:  How to downgrade nRF Connect?  ... however the link given for apps.json (http://developer.nordicsemi.com/.pc-tools/nrfconnect-apps/3.7-apps/apps.json) does not work with other version numbers, so I cannot test any other version, and as stated above 3.7 is not working.

Would it be possible to please have an estimate on this fix and to have further instructions on downgrading the Power Profiler tool in the meantime to avoid this bug?

Thank you.

[ovrebekk]

Hi Sirio

Stian is currently on vacation, and I will handle the case in the mean time. 

The fix Stian mentioned earlier hasn't been released yet, and the developers haven't been able to reproduce the issue internally so we can't be sure if the update will solve it either. 

It would be very helpful if you can try to downgrade the PPK application to v3.0.3, and see if that fixes the issue.  

You can download v3.0.3 of the PPK application here. 

For this to work you will need to install an older version of nRF Connect for Desktop as well, from the download page here. Version 3.6.1 should work with v3.0.3 of the PPK app. 

On Windows you need to put the content of the package folder in the tgz file into the C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\.nrfconnect-apps\node_modules\pc-nrfconnect-ppk folder. 

For Unix systems you will find the folder here:  ~/.nrfconnect-apps/node_modules/pc-nrfconnect-ppk/

Also, would you be able to check the value of the buffer used by the PPK application? 
You can find this by opening the PPK app, connecting your PPK board, and pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + A. Then there should be a setting called "Max size of buffer" that you can read back. 

EDIT: I originally wrote v3.6 of the PPK application, this is now corrected to v3.0.3. Sorry for the confusion. 

Best regards
Torbjørn

[ishgum]

Am also experiencing this issue. The PPK has been working perfectly, I haven't used it for a month or so, came back and it was super slow.

Using a Mac M1.

Have tried v3.12, 3.7 and 3.6.1 with matching profiler app and they all have the same problem

[sirio]

I was having this problem also. FWIW this seems fixed with the latest update:

- nRF Connect for Desktop v3.12.1

- Power Profiler v3.5.3

- macOS Big Sur

Appears related to devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../388898

[mchartier]

I concur. Performance issues appear to be resolved in the latest release. I tested on M1 Mac running macOS 13.0 and profiler v3.5.3