Debugging nRF51822 application through UART using SDK8.1 and eclipse/gcc toolchain

[tumaku]

I would like a working example of a simple application that uses soft_device (either S110 or S120) plus UART debugging. I have read many posts in this forum about this topic but it is difficult (so far impossible for me) to get a complete/end-to.end answer.

Constraints:

• nRF51 SDK 8.1
• Using eclipse/gcc toolchain as expalined in Tutorial devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../
• Using a standalone module (no development kit) so UART pins need to be configurable (I am using Red Bear Lab BLE Nano module but other modules are also possible)

Thanks for your help!

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

Look for app_uart in the SDK. There are also example code of that in the SDK.

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

It should be working in the ble examples in the sdk. Try the ble_app_hrs example and define ENABLE_DEBUG_LOG_SUPPORT, so that app_trace_init() in app_trace.h gets defined. Then call app_trace_init() from the top of main(). You should now see some activity on the RX_PIN_NUMBER and TX_PIN_NUMBER. You can set these pin definitions to what ever pin you want.

It is documented here: developer.nordicsemi.com/.../a00169.html

You should also check out RTT debugging if you are using a JLINK debugger: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

[tumaku]

Thanks for the hints. They have helped me on my goal (debugging/loggig using the eclipse/gcc toolchain explained in the tutorial

@nguyen: I had already tried app_uart without success. I retried it again and I got it working:) Silly mistake from my side but I was using the default UART initialisation which I had to update

const app_uart_comm_params_t comm_params =
{
    RX_PIN_NUMBER,
    TX_PIN_NUMBER,
    RTS_PIN_NUMBER,
    CTS_PIN_NUMBER,
    APP_UART_FLOW_CONTROL_ENABLED,
    false,
    UART_BAUDRATE_BAUDRATE_Baud38400
};

I disabled HW flow control (change APP_UART_FLOW_CONTROL_ENABLED by APP_UART_FLOW_CONTROL_DISABLED) and my serial connection started working at 38400 bauds. I used the Serial Monitor of my Arduino IDE but any other serial terminal app should work.

Interesting to note that the UART PINs (RX_PIN_NUMBER, TX_PIN_NUMBER) are assigned/defined in bsp.h -> boards.h -> pca10028.h (I am using BLE Nano but I use flag CFLAGS = -DBOARD_PCA10028 in makefile)

@stian Thanks a lot for pointing out the RTT tutorial. I had dismissed it because it included keil in the requirement list (I am using eclipse). However, I read it and it was straight forward to enable RTT logging with J-link in eclipse.

I extracted the RTT zip folder in my SDK component folder and then added a couple of files/lines to my makefile:

C_SOURCE_FILES += \
...........
../../../../../../components/rtt/RTT/SEGGER_RTT.c \
../../../../../../components/rtt/RTT/SEGGER_RTT_printf.c \
...........


INC_PATHS += -I../../../../../../components/rtt/RTT

Finally I included the RTT library in the main.c file of the project:

#include "SEGGER_RTT.h" 

No need to initialise RTT with a explicit call. You can start using it in the code straight away:

SEGGER_RTT_WriteString(0, "Hello World!\n"); 

or

SEGGER_RTT_printf(0, "Length %d \n", p_evt_write->len);  

If you have J-Link (and J-Link RTT Viewer application as explained in the tutorial) there is no need for UART debugging anymore!

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

Alright! Thank you for the feedback! I'll just include the link to the RTT tutorial here for others to see: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

[etienne]

What about the sys call files !??