nRF Connect Install requires a huge amount of packages

[brianreinhold]

I have developed a set of applications using just SoftDevice for Bluetooth and flash read and writes in the framework of nFR51 and nRF52 SDKs. Now I was thinking of moving to nRF Connect. I already have Visual Studio Code installed for a project that is handled remotely from my Windows 64 10 PC  on a Linux Raspberry PI. So I installed the extensions for Nordic. However, I could not find the locations on my computer where they were installed. VS Code itself is installed on a second disk E.

However I was far from finished. It looks like I need to install a great number of third party programs I have never heard of including the nRF Command Line Tools. I do not intend to use the command line tools and have never used this tool to date. Why do I need this? Is it absolutely necessary to install all these third party packages like 'chocolately',  'west', python??? , Zephyr I can understand... This is probably gigabytes of junk. I cannot image all of this stuff ever getting cleaned up. Do I really need all this? Why Python? That's a whole SDK for building Python applications ... that is huge.

How many of these can I get rid of once nRF Connect is installed. What does 'chocolatey and west do? I realize that I can install even more stuff and get the manager to do all of this for me but that is just hiding all the junk getting downloaded and installed.

I went to the Nordic 'Seminar' in Boston (Waltham) about a month ago where I was introduced to nRF Connect.

So the actual goal here was to see if this project would have a smaller footprint using SoftDevice (used now) or the nRF Connect SDK and which was easier to implement. There is interest in this project (which is a generic health device model over a BTLE tunnel) primarily in China at the moment so It would be nice to have an answer. One thing the seminar did not reveal was the massive amount of support software needed to get off the ground.

[ovrebekk]

Hi Brian

However, I could not find the locations on my computer where they were installed. VS Code itself is installed on a second disk E.

VSCode extensions should be installed in the %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions folder. Typically something like c:\Users\USERNAME\.vscode\extensions. I confirmed this on my own machine, and can see 5 folders with the nordic-semiconductor prefix for the various Nordic extensions.

I do not intend to use the command line tools and have never used this tool to date. Why do I need this?

That is odd to hear you have never use this before, the nRF Command Line tools contains the base drivers to interface with the debug chip on the various nRF52 DK's, and is used for flashing and debugging the DK's. I would expect you to have used this when working with the nRF5 SDK and the SoftDevices. 

These tools are listed in the Tools and downloads section of the nRF52 series DK's, based on the 'old' platform (nRF5 SDK and SoftDevice). 

Is it absolutely necessary to install all these third party packages like 'chocolately',  'west', python???

Chocolatey should no longer be necessary. This is a packet manager that was used to install the various toolchain components in the first releases of the nRF Connect SDK, but has now been replaced by the Toolchain Manager (TCM) application in nRF Connect for Desktop. 

When using the TCM it is basically a one click operation to install a specific version of the SDK, and this includes the various toolchain components such as West and Python. 

You define the install directory for any new SDK versions. Then the SDK's will be installed in a subfolder named v2.1.0 for instance, while the toolchain will be installed in the /toolchain/v2.1.0 folder. 

At the moment each SDK install comes with its own version of the toolchain which does contribute to the bloat definitely, but greatly reduces the chance of build errors caused by incorrect toolchain components. 

Do I really need all this? Why Python? That's a whole SDK for building Python applications ... that is huge.

Python is used by a lot of the build scripts in the toolchain and as such is critical, with West being the most important of these Python scripts. West is the meta tool that handles the download and update of the various repositories included under the nRF Connect SDK umbrella, and can also be used to start build, flash and other operations from the command line. 

I doubt the whole Python SDK should be downloaded though. The entire toolchain comes in at about 1GB, and I think the Python binaries are a relatively small portion of this. 

How many of these can I get rid of once nRF Connect is installed. What does 'chocolatey and west do? I realize that I can install even more stuff and get the manager to do all of this for me but that is just hiding all the junk getting downloaded and installed.

I doubt there is much you can get rid of since most of these tools are used for building applications. Possibly you could get rid of chocolatey and leave the scripts in place, but I am not sure. 

Frankly you will be much better of using the Toolchain Manager. As I mentioned earlier all the resulting junk can be found in the [SDK_FOLDER]/toolchain/v2.x.x folder, so using the TCM should not make it any harder to find compared to chocolatey

You can uninstall the TCM and nRF Connect for Desktop once everything is installed, these are not used for building or developing applications. That said there are a lot of useful apps within nRF Connect for Desktop, such as the Bluetooth application and the Power Profiler (for owners of a Power Profiler Kit), so I think this is an application worth keeping. 

If you really want to keep your system as un-affected as possible the best option is probably to install everything in a virtual machine. If you want to go down this route though it is recommended to run a virtual Linux installation, since the build performance is generally faster in Linux than on Windows. 

I went to the Nordic 'Seminar' in Boston (Waltham) about a month ago where I was introduced to nRF Connect.

I remember, I was there!

I think we had a chat at the end, regarding the work you have been doing with the SoftDevice

I didn't represent nRF Connect though, so any promises made about it I will put on Karl's shoulders

So the actual goal here was to see if this project would have a smaller footprint using SoftDevice (used now) or the nRF Connect SDK and which was easier to implement. There is interest in this project (which is a generic health device model over a BTLE tunnel) primarily in China at the moment so It would be nice to have an answer. One thing the seminar did not reveal was the massive amount of support software needed to get off the ground.

Are you talking about memory footprint on the device, or the size of the toolchain?

What is more easy to implement is a complicated question to answer. The toolchain and build system is definitely more complicated, but making applications is typically not because of the advantages the build system offers. As an example the Bluetooth heart rate example in Zephyr is about 130 lines of code i main.c, compared to a much more complex example in the nRF5 SDK. And exactly the same main file can run fine on the nRF51, nRF52 or nRF53 devices by only changing the board file in the build, which is something the nRF5 SDK could only dream off...

Your development model is a bit different than most customers though, as you don't really use any of the libraries in the SDK and just program for the SoftDevice directly. I am not sure this will work as well in the new SDK, since we don't really have a SoftDevice anymore, but have split the BLE controller and host into two separate pieces of software. 

One thing the seminar did not reveal was the massive amount of support software needed to get off the ground.

To be fair, I think we mentioned most of these tools in the seminar, but it is true that Python isn't mentioned in the slides. This I can take as feedback to future iterations of the slides. Chocolatey is not mentioned either, but as I said we recommend using the TCM instead, rather than having to install all the tools manually. 

Finally I hope you have taken the time to go through the DevAcademy? 
It really makes a big difference in getting started with the nRF Connect SDK

Best regards
Torbjørn

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

And exactly the same main file can run fine on the nRF51, nRF52 or nRF53 devices by only changing the board file in the build, which is something the nRF5 SDK could only dream off...

Wrong, it exists 5 years ago without any scripting software only gcc compiler. It has been posted on this forum since.  

https://embeddedsoftdev.blogspot.com/2017/12/bluetooth-le-with-nordic-nrf51-nrf52.html

https://embeddedsoftdev.blogspot.com/2018/02/bluetooth-le-with-nordic-nrf51-nrf52.html

With only a few line of code, no RTOS, no 10K line of defines.

Original source code here

https://github.com/I-SYST/EHAL

new version moved here

https://github.com/IOsonata/IOsonata

[ovrebekk]

Hi

Nguyen Hoan Hoang said:

It is bad that a silicon vendor force the software people to lock in to a particular RTOS.

Just to be clear, Nordic doesn't force you to do anything. Our devices use standard ARM Cortex M microcontrollers, and our datasheets document all the peripherals that are non standard (like the radio and the various interfaces). If you want to write all the software yourself, or use a third party software framework, that is entirely up to you. 

The only limitation in using a third party software framework is that the support responsibility falls on the developer of the software, not Nordic. I don't think you will find any silicon vendor that takes support responsibility for other peoples software, unless they have an established partnership with the software provider in question. 

Best regards
Torbjørn

[ovrebekk]

Hi Brian

brianreinhold said:

What I like about the SDK is SoftDevice. It is basic GATT/GAP and avoids the crazy BTLE profiles dreamt up by BT SIG. Having worked on a few of those standards, BT SIG just can't seem to learn simplicity and consistency and each profile is created without much thought to any other profile.

You will be happy to hear that you get a standard GAP and GATT API, then. Running standard services is entirely optional

Similar to the SoftDevice the API is grouped into groups such as GATT server, GATT client and GAP. 

Because the Zephyr Bluetooth API is vendor agnostic it is much more focused on Bluetooth only, and follows the naming conventions set out by the Bluetooth specification. 

The SoftDevice by comparison is more Nordic centric, and includes various features not technically Bluetooth related (such as the flash, clock, and power management functions). 

brianreinhold said:

What I like about the nRF51 is that it can only do basic BTLE  (4.2 maybe) and for those devices that need no more than that and are happy with the MTU of 23 that is good. Because it can only do 4.2 the memory footprint of the application is considerably smaller than the same application built using nRF52 devices. At least mine were. On the other hand if the nRF52 is now cheaper and takes less power running the same application then it would be hard to argue for starting a new project with the nRF51

You won't be able to build Bluetooth 4.2 stacks anymore, but as I mentioned earlier you can link out functions that you don't need. Also, if you don't need more than 23 byte MTU the RAM consumption is lower. 

As you say the nRF52 gives you more memory and performance for less cost, so there is really no good reason to use the nRF51 anymore. 

brianreinhold said:

I do not know what nRFConnect brings to my application compared to the SoftDevice only BTLE version of the application. I did hear that the SoftDevice equivalent here will be source thus allowing optimization by removing unused functions which is not present in the SoftDevice library of the SDK.

Ideally the Bluetooth part of the application should be relatively equivalent, the difference is more in the other libraries you have available as a part of the nRF Connect SDK. 

You might find some value in being able to run your application on non Nordic hardware as well, even if we hope you will chose to stick to Nordic devices

brianreinhold said:

I not sure how hard it will be using an RTOS. An OS is supposed to make life easier at the same time more of what goes on becomes a black box. There is something to be said for the simplicity of a non-OS application on an embedded system.

Using an RTOS should ideally be no harder than using a bare metal system. A bare metal implementation is easier to understand intuitively, since there are much less layers of software between the hardware and your main function, but once you start writing more complex applications then you need to put more complexity into the application to handle things that an RTOS can otherwise do for you. 

In a way having an RTOS moves some of the complexity from the application into the underlying RTOS, which makes it harder to learn the framework, but makes it easier to understand the various applications. This is especially useful when multiple people work together on a larger project, or when you have to work on many different projects rather than just maintaining a single one. 

The main challenge of adopting to the RTOS way of thinking is that you have to structure your programs a bit differently. As an example, in the nRF5 SDK good coding practice was to never use blocking function calls. With an RTOS you are now free to use blocking calls from threads, since other threads will be able to run while one thread is blocked (and if all threads are inactive you will automatically go to sleep). 

brianreinhold said:

Since I have no investment in any hardware yet (all my work has been for developing a generic standard for health devices) the only thing I loose by moving to nRFConnect is my time learning and implementing the new approach. For those who have units in the field the cost is probably much greater.

Fair point. We don't really recommend people porting existing nRF5 projects to the nRF Connect SDK, unless they really need features not available in the older SDK. It is usually better to adopt the new SDK when you have a new project, making it easier to make a clean break. 

Best regards
Torbjørn

[brianreinhold]

The non-blocking restriction does make life more difficult but most non-OS based embedded systems run in that manner (at least that is what I am led to believe). In my project I have a situation where the characteristic value can be longer than the MTU. So it has to be sent fragmented. So when notifying, one would send 6 notifications but then one needs to wait for the ack event before one can send more. So I would exit the send routine and basically wait on sd_app_evt_wait() and handle the events myself when it woke.

I have never really fully understood that call, but I assumed it could only be called in one place in your program and your entire program ran around this call. When it would exit, you would check everything you might need to do and return to the sd_app_evt_wait().  Anything else, like a sleep, is just a busy loop and a horrible way to wait for something to happen before continuing,

So that's what I have done. When I used the pc-driver-btle library on the PC, I could use mutexes and semahores which DID dramatically simplify the program - but at the cost of having a multi-tasking OS which diminishes real time implementations.

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

ovrebekk said:

Just to be clear, Nordic doesn't force you to do anything

It has been said time over by Nordic people that if you want to use the nRF53 or nRF91 you have use Zephyr!!!  SDK not available otherwise.  DUH !!!

[ovrebekk]

Nguyen Hoan Hoang said:

It has been said time over by Nordic people that if you want to use the nRF53 or nRF91 you have use Zephyr!!!  SDK not available otherwise.  DUH !!!

Then I am glad I could clear up that misunderstanding