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nRF Connect v1.0 release

Bjørn Inge

We are happy to announce that nRF Connect has reached v1.0 production release and has been made available on the nRF Connect for desktop product page on the Nordic Semiconductor web site.

About nRF Connect

  • a Bluetooth low energy tool for development and exploration
  • allows you to quickly set up connections with other Bluetooth low energy devices and perform operations on them
  • cross platform support: runs on Windows, Ubuntu Linux and OSX

Release change log

We have listened to feedback from our users and have added some improvements and new features. Here is a list of the most important changes between this release and the previous v1.0 RC release:

  • Automatic firmware detection and programming
  • New version of connectivity firmware, fixes issue of crash when receiving many notifications
  • Display both serial port name and J-Link serial number, making it easier to find the correct serial port to connect to
  • Improved stability related to opening and switching between adapters
  • Sorting and filtering of discovered devices list
  • Support for adding custom advertising types
  • Text parsing and input for well known characteristic types
  • Connected devices stay in the list of discovered devices, making it easier to reconnect
  • Automatic discovery of descriptors, making it easier to enable notifications
  • Buttons for operations (like read, write, notify) are hidden when they are not supported by a characteristic
  • Support for adding custom UUID definitions
  • Copy & paste functionality on OSX has been fixed
  • Dedicated button for opening detailed log file

Known issues

There are still some unresolved issues which we hope to improve on in future releases. These are the most important issues:

  • Segger J-Link USB issue on OSX: More information towards the end of the article
  • Missing support for address resolving. This means it is not possible to reestablish security with stored bond keys when the peer device has changed its advertising address.

Roadmap

Source code on GitHub

The source code of nRF Connect will be made available on GitHub, complete with build instructions. ETA: a few weeks. Update: the release of the source code has been postponed. See related comment below the article.

More releases

We will continue to improve the application going forward, adding features and improving the overall experience. Stay tuned for more to come.

Downloads

File downloads and getting started guide can be found in the downloads tab on the nRF Connect for desktop product page.

Bug reports

If you are having problems related to nRF Connect, please open an issue on DevZone Questions.

#J-Link OB USB issue on Mac OS and Linux [Update] The issue is now also found on newer versions of Linux, not only on Mac OS.

Summary

There is a an issue with the Segger J-Link OB firmware related to USB packet sizes and endpoints. The issue manifests itself on Mac OS and Linux where it may lead to corruption of packets over UART, unless the following workaround is applied.

Workaround

Please perform the following to make the device function properly on OSX and Linux:

  • @John The components provided by nrfconnect-core will be main components assumed relevant for different application plugins. Current plans include logging, flash programming, port enumeration, BLE api (ble-driver-js), and main visual components like main view, navigation bar, port selection, side bar, etc.

    Features other than those listed will have to be implemented in each specific plugin, for example a Mesh application plugin.

    I hope this answered your question.

  • May I ask if there is any intrinsic Mesh functionality within the nrfconnect-core component that is intended to be released at the end of next week please?

    Or do we have to wait for the BLE application plugin before the nrfconnect-core component becomes functional as a viable mesh system?

  • Hi, here is some info on the source code release of nRF Connect.

    The team has the last period been working on rewriting nRF Connect to be a pluggable framework. In essence, there will be a generic main component called nrfconnect-core, which will reside in a separate repository. The applications specific parts will be loaded as application plugins, and they will reside in own separate repositories. The nrfconnect-core component will be the first component that we release the source code of, and ETA for that is end of next week (week 10, 2017).

    The BLE application plugin, which is basically all application specific parts of nRF Connect as it is known today, will be released when it has been ported over to the new plugin framework. No ETA on this part at the moment, but it has priority and it will be released as soon as it is ready.

  • It's almost March...It would be really great if you were able to confirm a potential release date please.

  • Hi all,
    due to a pending company policy around licenses there will be yet another delay in the source code release for nRF Connect. Current unconfirmed ETA is around the beginning of March.