Using nRF Connect to configure a nRF52840

[DonGlover]

I am trying to learn the ins and outs of using the nRF 52840 to send a signal out that can be acted upon by an outside device.
Poking my way through the inadequate documentation and not finding what I need. I am currently trying to use nRF connect.
I have created a new service and a new characteristic.  If I >don't< set any properties I can apply the configuration to the configuration just fine.
If I select ANY properties, it fails to apply (it also fails to give any basic error message).
What piece of "if you know, you know" information am I missing?

[Hung Bui]

Hi Don, 

I'm trying to recreate the problem here but couldn't see it. 

As you can see in the screen shot, I can click save and then can see that what I selected is stored and I can come back to change it. 

How did you do the test  ? Did you have any connection when you change the server ? I would suggest to do that at the beginning when you select the dongle before you do scanning or connection.
Also could you let me know the version of nRF Connect for Desktop (and the nRF Connect BLE Standalone app)?  

Have you tried to test with a Dev Kit instead of the dongle ?

[DonGlover]

Hung, 

Thank you for the reply. Are you sure it was applied? My expectation is that if it is successfully applied I will see a "Server setup was applied" message as shown below. I don't get that message when I have properties checked nor do I see it in your message above. Further, when I set the dongle to advertise, I use the nRF app on my phone to see the update in the first case and do not see updates in the second.
I don't have a dev kit available.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Don, 

Sorry that I captured without clicked on the Apply to device. 
It worked fine for me. And I can use the phone to see the service and characteristic: 

What I noticed in your case is that you have notify checked. When you have notify checked, the Bluetooth spec requires the characteristic to have a descriptor to control when it can send notification. So what you need in your case is to add the descriptor 0x2902 to handle CCCD like this: 

Then it should work. I assume a error message is missing in this case to tell that the server configuration is not applied because the descriptor is not added when notification is selected.

In addition, I am not so sure which  UUIDs you are using, but if you are doing proprietary you would need to use 128 bit UUID not 16 bit UUID. The UUID you can see in my test was from the lbs example. 

[DonGlover]

Thanks. 
It appears that I am still missing something fundamental here. 
Does Nordic provide a working example .ncs file that can be downloaded to examine?

[Hung Bui]

Hi Don, 

We currently don't have an .ncs example file. If you have any question you can ask me. 

The feature of setting up a server on nRF Connect may not be the most popular feature as it lack of any way to modify the data dynamically or to send notification. It's more like an add-on feature. 

The nRF Connect app focuses more on the client side than server as most of the time the server is implemented on the peripheral.

 
I would assume you already find the documentation of the program, but I will leave the link here, just in case: https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/ug_nrfconnect_ble/UG/nRF_Connect_BLE/nRF_Connect_Maintaining_server_setup.html?cp=11_3_0_8