Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 does not work with nRF Mesh Android App

[Alex Ross]

Hello,

Not sure where to direct this (we can open a GitHub issue but wanted to clear it here first), basically everything works great on our Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (SM-P610), can provision, everything. Same for the iOS version. However on the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 (SM-X200) can see the device to be provisioned, but fails to provision it after the first steps.

We're using the 833 dev kit with soft device 140.  

Thanks,

Alex

[Simonr]

Hi

We found an issue in the Samsung Galaxy A8 Bluetooth capabilities this summer, where it seems to send packets with a longer payload than what has been negotiated, which caused these issues with our devices, as they will terminate the connection if this happens. Our conclusion was that there wasn't anything to be done on the nRF side of the application to remedy this.

Best regards,

Simon

[JonasJ]

Thanks for letting us know about that issue. I'm not sure that is the same issue here as it works when using ST BLE Mesh app on the same Tablet and Mesh device. So it appears to be something that the nRF Mesh App does differently.

Also, the packets are re-transmitted multiple times with the data corrupted at the same position in the packet. All with correct length.

Another point is that it works just fine if the Mesh device is running NCS 2.1.0 examples instead of nRF5 SDK For Mesh v5.0.0 examples.

Have Nordic contacted Samsung about this issue to get it fixed?

[Simonr]

Yes, we have contacted Samsung. Unfortunately I don't have details on the progress.

Since this is specific to Mesh this might indeed be another issue, and even an issue in the nRF5 SDK for Mesh. If so, we'd strongly recommend moving to the nRF Connect SDK, which is the SDK that's being updated with bug fixes and new features. The nRF5 SDK for Mesh is in maintenance mode I'm afraid.

Best regards,

Simon

[JonasJ]

Hi,

Moving to nRF Connect SDK is also on my wishlist but the product is close to release and there is no time/money to rewrite everything right now. Newer products early in the development have switched to NCS.

I still suspect that something is wrong with the Nordic Mesh library for Android as the ST BLE Mesh app works just fine with the same "Samsung A8 tablet" and "nRF5 SDK For Mesh device". Well, at least to provision properly.

If there was an issue with the length, why is only the nRF Mesh library and nRF5 SDK For Mesh affected by this issue?

Also, why would only part of the message get corrupted by the Samsung table when sending them to a nRF5 SDK for Mesh but not the NCS. It's the same 69 bytes MTU negotiated.

Anything else I can check to debug this further?

Thanks.