Connecting RF52840 dongle with Raspberry Pi 4B with sensor for 802.15.4 transmission

[Sohaib]

hello, 

I have a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor connected to Raspberry Pi 4 B. I want to transmit this data from this raspberry pi to another node using 802.15.4. The communication module I am using is RF52840 dongle. What i want to know is, will this dongle work by just plugging it into the USB port of the raspberry pi or I need to something additional as well?

secondly, what software do i need to install on my raspberry pi to enable the dongle for the transmission and reception of data through 802.15.4?

I am new to this stuff kindly help me out on how to start, so I can develop my sensor node. 

Thank you

Sohaib

[Edvin]

Hello Sohaib,

As far as I know, we don't have any raw 802.15.4 applications that you can program on the nRF52840 dongle (or DK for that matter) that will transfer data between the dongles connected to the RPi.

We do have both UART (which would only work with the DK) over BLE applications, and some USB over BLE (but only for the "old" nRF5 SDK, and only peripheral, not central). 

Is the 802.15.4 a strict requirement, or doesn't it really matter as long as it is wireless? And do you have access to any DKs for testing purposes? It is a lot easier to develop nRF applications using the DKs, and then porting it over to the dongle when you are done, since the dongle doesn't have a debugger. 

Best regards,

Edvin

[Sohaib]

Hi Edven,

Thanks for your reply. Actually 802.15.4 is a requirement, and I don't have anu development kits, I only have some dongles which I plan to use with raspberry pi as transceivers. 

I have seen people using this dongle for 802.15.4 thread network. Will following the same process help me achieve my goal?

[Edvin]

We do have some samples for radio co-processor (RCP sample found in ncs\nrf\openthread\coprocessor) in a thread network. While a thread network is using 802.15.4, it needs to follow the thread specification. Also, we do not provide the application that will use this radio co-processor, but you can run something called the openthread CLI (ot-cli) on the raspberry pi. This is not provided by us. The CLI commands are defined by openthread, and you can read about it's usage here:
https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/samples/openthread/cli/README.html#ot-cli-sample

Best regards,

Edvin

[Sohaib]

I have seen tutorials on installing the hex file on the dongle using windows based applications. If we flash the dongle  using nRF Connect for Desktop, can we now use it with the raspberry pi as a transceiver? or we still need to do some installation on the raspberry pi ?

[Edvin]

Depending on what you flashed to the dongle, you can use it with a raspberry pi. But the Raspberry pi will not magically have openthread just by doing this. You need to run some sort of library/FW that uses the USB radio (radio co-processor). 

I suggest that you look this up in an openthread forum instead of here, since we don't provide what you need to be running on the Raspberry Pi. That is provided by Google (if you intend to run OpenThread). 

Best regards,

Edvin