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]

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.

[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