BLE_ERROR_NOT_ENABLED (0x3001) from bleAdapter

[A.P]

Hi!

We're working with a gateway comprised of a workstation running RHEL 8.5, a Bluetooth USB dongle with a nRF52840 chip running the connectivity_4.1.2_usb_with_s132_5.1.0 firmware. The gateway uses PC- BLE-DRIVER-JS to control the dongle and send/receive data.

On one of our working stations, after days of active BLE connections without issues, this error was logged:

info: [libs/bleAdapter] startScan Started scanning...

error: [libs/bleAdapter] pc-ble-driver {
 "message": "Error occured when starting scan",
 "description": {
  "errno": 12289,
  "errcode": "BLE_ERROR_NOT_ENABLED",
  "erroperation": "starting scan",
  "errmsg": "Error occured when starting scan. Errorcode: BLE_ERROR_NOT_ENABLED (0x3001)\n"
 }
}
2022-06-15T23:24:32.015Z error: [server] unhandledRejection Error starting scanning: Error: Error occured when starting scan. Errorcode: BLE_ERROR_NOT_ENABLED (0x3001)
.: Error: Error starting scanning: Error: Error occured when starting scan. Errorcode: BLE_ERROR_NOT_ENABLED (0x3001)
.
    at /opt/central/code/build/libs/bleAdapter.js:134:28
    at /opt/central/code/node_modules/pc-ble-driver-js/api/adapter.js:2389:29

The BLE_ERROR_NOT_ENABLED error, via a short google search leads to a 'you need to enable the SD before advertising' which does not fit here, as we've been scanning and connecting with BLE peripherals for days before this happened.

Any other thoughts as to how we could get this error from the BLE driver?

Thanks!

[Edvin]

Could it be that the nRF has rebooted at some point, for instance  if the PC has temporarily turned off the USB at some point during entering sleep or something?

If you try to enable the softdevice and then start scannign again, does that work? If so, it would suggest that the nRF has been reset, and that the softdevice is not enabled.

Best regards,

Edvin

[A.P]

Hi Edvin!
Thank you for the reply. Our logs don't show any shut down or reboot of the PC nor of our process. This just popped up in the middle of 'normal operation' as far as we can tell.

We have not been able to recreate this so far, so I cant tell you if enabling the SD solves the problem. A restart to our process does enable the SD and after that scanning does work again.
I'll update if this happens again, and if you can think of a reason why this would happen out of the blue, or some verbose flag we could open to see more details if this happens again, please let me know.

Thanks!