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 Jonas

Just to make sure we're on the same page, this issue only occurs in the specific combination when using the Samsung A8 tablet with the nRF Mesh app and an nRF52 device with a Mesh application from the nRF5 SDK for Mesh, correct? You can't see it using other phones/tablets?

You say that the message always get corrupted at the same "place" in the packet, have you been able to find out what part of the packet this is specifically? Perhaps something either the tablet or nRF5 Mesh SDK doesn't support?

Just trying to find out where exactly this fails so I can discuss this with the app developers.

Best regards,

Simon

[JonasJ]

Hi Simonr ,

You are correct, that's the only combination where I've seen this issue. The nRF Mesh app and nRF5 SDK for Mesh work fine with all other Android devices I've tested.

It's the Provisioning Public Key message that gets corrupted. I've attached a quick screencast where I step through the corrupted messages from the pcap file attached earlier. There one can see what is changed between each packet.

(I wasn't able to upload the webm file so it's converted to gif)

Not sure what is special about the Public Key message except that it's bigger than the previous messages.

Thanks

[Simonr]

Do you have a similar gif of using a phone where you don't run into this issue available as well that we can use for comparison? Unfortunately I'm not sure what this means either, and need to check internally to get a better idea.

Best regards, 

Simon

[JonasJ]

Hi,

For the working case, there isn't much to say. It's only one Public Key packet from phone to device and then the device answers back with it's public key in the next packet.

I can do a capture of the working case later this week as well if needed.

Thanks.

[Simonr]

Okay, after some more discussion with more colleagues, I'm afraid there won't be anything we can do. The conflict seems to be between the SoftDevice and the Samsung Galaxy A8 BLE stacks. If we were to do something, since we're not familiar with the A8s stack it would be trial and error until we found a resolution. I'm afraid we won't provide a new SoftDevice update for the nRF5 SDK. I'm very sorry to disappoint.

Best regards,

Simon