Integrating UART with BLE Mesh

RE: Integrating UART with BLE Mesh

Evan Colt — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 19:23:32 GMT

Hi,

I ended up switching our implementation over to ble_app_uart and managed to get the project working for our purposes. I am still unsure about what was causing the conflict between libuart_async and the mesh code we had running but I can figure that out in the future if needed. In order to get the ble_app_uart to work I had to remove all of the defines linking nrf_drv_uart and other files to the apply_old_config.h file. Thank you for your help.

Best,

Evan

RE: Integrating UART with BLE Mesh

AHaug — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 13:39:23 GMT

[quote user="DarkColt"]I did not write the original libUART implementation for the application and I cannot figure out the exact way that we made it work with the mesh. What I can say is that when I try to re-implement libUART on a fresh version of the mesh dimming example I am running into a number of runtime error that I am assuming the person who originally did this ran into and fixed by modifying the libUART library. I am running into an issue where I am getting an INVALID_STATE runtime error from line 398 in nrf_libuart_async.c [/quote]

There might be some clock dependencies in between what mesh uses and what libuart uses, but I would initially recommend you to have a look at the following two resources before we dive into that:

I believe the latter sample should be exactly what you want (i.e a mesh light switch sample mixed with the link_ble_app_uart_example example from the nRF5 SDK).

Let me know if this is enough to get it to work!

Kind regards,
Andreas

RE: Integrating UART with BLE Mesh

Evan Colt — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 18:24:34 GMT

Have you seen and/or gotten the libuart sample in nRF5 SDK to work on its own without being integrated in a Mesh device?

I got the sample to work independently from mesh and it worked perfectly.

Can you check if you already have one UART in your application before you add libuarte? This might be the case since you get 2x interrupts

I have not seen a second implementation of UART and I cannot find one when I look. The only UART is libUART

Could you explain how you set up the UART?

I did not write the original libUART implementation for the application and I cannot figure out the exact way that we made it work with the mesh. What I can say is that when I try to re-implement libUART on a fresh version of the mesh dimming example I am running into a number of runtime error that I am assuming the person who originally did this ran into and fixed by modifying the libUART library. I am running into an issue where I am getting an INVALID_STATE runtime error from line 398 in nrf_libuart_async.c

if (p_libuarte->p_ctrl_blk->enabled)
{
   return NRF_ERROR_INVALID_STATE;
}

do you know what might be the cause of this? I am following the libuart sample exactly so I am inferring that this is a issue where the library is conflicting with the mesh. If I can troubleshoot these issues the reason why there is a duplicated interrupt may become apparent.

RE: Integrating UART with BLE Mesh

AHaug — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 12:43:57 GMT

Hi,

[quote user=""]Question 1) Does anyone know why I might be encountering these two bugs?[/quote]

Our initial thoughts is that this is related to the UART part of your application and not the Mesh part.

Could you explain how you set up the UART?
Have you seen and/or gotten the libuart sample in nRF5 SDK to work on its own without being integrated in a Mesh device?
Can you check if you already have one UART in your application before you add libuarte? This might be the case since you get 2x interrupts

[quote user=""]Question 2) Is there a better way to integrate BLE Mesh with UART than using the libUART_async library from NRF SDK 17.0.2. So far I have not seen any other ways to do this but I am open to other options.[/quote]

If you don't need to use libuarte it might be sufficient to use a "normal" UART, like the one used in the ble_app_uart sample

Kind regards,
Andreas