NCS and Atmel WINC1500

[dario.sortino]

Hello everyone!

Based on this  Atmel winc 1500 with NCS , I wanted to try also myself to interface my custom board based on nRF5340 with a WINC1500.

I'm building for nrf5340cpuapp and the devicetree overlay is the following 

0042.nrf5340dk_nrf5340_cpuapp.overlay

As in the above-mentioned issue, I edited the prj.config accordingly and it builds correctly.

The problem is that the following lines

CONFIG_WIFI_WINC1500=y

CONFIG_WIFI_WINC1500_REGION_EUROPE=y

shows a yellow squiggle and a comment saying "In build: n". Hovering on them it appears as follows

- CONFIG_WIFI_WINC1500 was assigned the value y, but got the value n. Missing dependencies:

DT_HAS_ATMEL_WINC1500_ENABLED

- CONFIG_WIFI_WINC1500_REGION_EUROPE was assigned the value y, but got the value n. Missing dependencies:

<choice>

I'm using NCS 2.2.0. I have no clue on how to solve this because there is little to zero documentation about this particular interface (WINC and NCS)

[dario.sortino]

Wanted to add that it doesn't relate to the http_client sample mentioned in the issue, but also for example with the zephyr/wifi sample, or custom applications

[Øyvind]

Hello, 

I will have a look into your case and discuss with my colleague Sigurd from the ticket you are referring to.

Kind regards,
Øyvind

[Øyvind]

Hello again, 
Tested this on my side using nRF Connect SDK v2.3.0 with your overlay, and added hal_atmel as described in the ticket you refer to. 

There seems to be missing configurations, the following worked for me running the wifi sample:

CONFIG_WIFI=y
CONFIG_NETWORKING=y
CONFIG_WIFI_WINC1500=y
CONFIG_WIFI_WINC1500_REGION_EUROPE=y

Please note that the Winc1500 is not a part of Nordic Semiconductors products, and we would encourage you to use our new WiFi companion IC, the nRF70 series. The nRF7002 is designed to be used alongside Nordic’s existing nRF52 and nRF53 Series Bluetooth Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), and nRF91 Series cellular IoT Systems-in-Package (SiPs). The nRF7002 can also be used in conjunction with non-Nordic host devices. 

Kind regards,
Øyvind

[dario.sortino]

Good to know, I also was able to make it work.

By adding the following lines 

CONFIG_SHELL_BACKEND_RTT=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y
CONFIG_RTT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_LOG=y

I am also able to interact with the Wifi Shell via RTT in my custom board.

Now, the wifi scan command results in

 

In the meanwhile that I'll debug the correct wiring of the WINC1500 module, is there a way to see deeper level of debug (SPI for example)

[dario.sortino]

Turned out that I connected erroneously a PIN.

I can communicate with the WINC and successfully scan the APs. I still fail to connect to my TestAP, so the question remains: can I go deeper in showing logs that can help me understand whats going on? Or what approach can I follow?

[Øyvind]

Happy to hear that you got it working!

Unfortunately, I'm not able to tell how debugging the WINC1500 works. You will need to contact the Zephyr community on Discord or Microchip directly.

[dario.sortino]

What about the Error code -5? I see that it originates from the wifi_mgmt_event_handler when it requests a connection. 

[Øyvind]

The error codes printed should errno codes, found in errno.h.

#define EIO 5           /**< I/O error */

From zephyr\drivers\wifi\winc1500\wifi_winc1500_config.h there is an option to enable more debug information

#define CONF_WINC_DEBUG				(0)

change to 

#define CONF_WINC_DEBUG				(1)

Perhaps this can provide more information on the issue.

[dario.sortino]

In the end the error code was due to an incorrect FW version running on the WINC. Updating it solved the issue!
Thank everyone!