How to run own application and the HRS example on a Laird BL600

[Torsten Scheidler]

Hi all,

first of all thank you for such a great knowledge base and community exchange.

I am pretty new in the development for nrf51822 devices. I managed to run the HRS example on the Nordic PC10028 with the S110 soft device as well as my own written bluetooth application containing timers.

When i tried to let my application run on the Laird BL600 with the S110 soft device (as well as the HRS example) it does not work. First it always get stuck when initializing the Softdevice with the SOFTDEVICE_HANDLER_INIT(..) call in my blue stack initialization. I already set/cleared the GPIO Pin 20 to zero as stated in another post on this website for making the Bluetooth run, but without any success.

Also when i remove the BLE stack initialization and only want to run my application with the timers, it seems to start well, but it does not call the specified time out handler.

As stated before everything works fine (HRS example and my own application) on the Nordic PCA10028 device, but on the Laird BL600 it does not work. I also used a default custom board configuration for this device (defining the LEDs, Buttons, etc. for the appropriated PINs).

I would appreciate, if somebody can give some advice or ideas, what might go wrong and could point out a solution.

Thanks in advance.

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Hi Torsten

By default when you initialize the softdevice, a 32kHz external crystal is started by default. If the crystal is not present in the BL600 module, it will fail. You could try to use the internal 32kHz RC instead to see if that is the problem, e.g. choose the NRF_CLOCK_LFCLKSRC_RC_250_PPM_TEMP_4000MS_CALIBRATION option.

What version of S110 softdevice do you have on the BL600 module. Is that compatible with the HRS example that you are using and the nRF51 revision on the BL600 module? You can see the compatibility of nRF51 hardware, softdevices and SDKs in the nRF51 compatibility matrix

This might be a known problem to Laird technologies. Have you contacted them yet?

[Torsten Scheidler]

Hi Stefan,

thanks for your fast reply. I forgot to mention that i am using the SDK 8.0.0 (so the soft device delivered with this kit) and according to the compatibility matrix, it seems that the S110 should be compatible. I also tried the initialization with the NRF_CLOCK_LFCLKSRC_RC_250_PPM_TEMP_4000MS_CALIBRATION (also forgot to mention that i read this in another post in this blog). About the contacting of Laird: No i have not contacted them yet, i first wanted to see, if somebody else in this blog had the same experience. I will contact them also and ask if this is a known problem.

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Do you have softdevice S110 version 8.0.0 on the BL600 module?

[Torsten Scheidler]

I used the rknrfgo application to put the S110 hex file on the board which is located under the SDK components soft device folder, why? I did this also with the PCA10028 Nordic board. Is there something wrong with this? Do i need to put another S110 on the board?

Maybe i misunderstood something and would appreciate if you can clarify this one ;)

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Ok, thanks for your clarification. Then the softdevice is S110 v8.0.0 and is valid, so that is not the problem. What error code do you receive when calling softdevice_handler_init?

[Torsten Scheidler]

Hi Stefan,

i figured out my problem with the SOFTDEVICE_HANDLER_INIT(). It mainly bows down, that i configured incorrect FLASH and RAM offsets in the .ld script for the BL600 Device, after correcting this it works. With those incorrect memory address offsets, i accidentally overwrote the soft device memory blocks.

In my opinion, we can close this question. Thanks for your help.