nRF Sniffer crashing

[Marius Heil]

Hello,

is the nRF Sniffer still in Development? The ble sniffer program keeps crashing at random after about 10-20 seconds and is barely usable for me. I have around 20 beacons advertising in proximity. I flashed the firmware on different nRF Dongles but without success. Here is the traceback that crashes the program:

15-Jun-2016 10:43:40 (Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit) ERROR: 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\bamboo\xml-data\build-dir\BLESNIFFER-RELEASEBUILD-JOB1\Host\Application\SnifferAPI\Packet.py", line 160, in getPacket
  File "C:\bamboo\xml-data\build-dir\BLESNIFFER-RELEASEBUILD-JOB1\Host\Application\SnifferAPI\Packet.py", line 137, in decodeFromSLIP
UARTPacketError: Unexpected character after SLIP_ESC: 0.
15-Jun-2016 10:43:40 (Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit) ERROR: CRASH
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\bamboo\xml-data\build-dir\BLESNIFFER-RELEASEBUILD-JOB1\Host\Application\SnifferAPI\Sniffer.py", line 150, in run
  File "C:\bamboo\xml-data\build-dir\BLESNIFFER-RELEASEBUILD-JOB1\Host\Application\SnifferAPI\Sniffer.py", line 175, in runSniffer
  File "C:\bamboo\xml-data\build-dir\BLESNIFFER-RELEASEBUILD-JOB1\Host\Application\SnifferAPI\SnifferCollector.py", line 153, in _continuouslyPipe
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'valid'

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I used different SEGGER firmwares but these did not solve the problem. Using the 3rd Party OSX application works excellnt, but I do not use OS X and I would be greatful if the bug in the nRF Sniffer Application could be fixed.

Thanks, Marius

[Hung Bui]

Hi Marius,

Could you give more information on :

• Which operating system you are using ?

• Which Segger firmware ?

• Which hardware board (and version) you are using as sniffer front end ?

• Could you send the full log file of nRFSniffer console (press s when issue occurs). Also please take a screenshot when issue happens.

• Please send us a wireshark trace recording a session until it crashes.

• If you have less advertiser around, would it work ? In my case here, I have seen more than 20 advertiser and it still works.

[Marius Heil]

I am using Windows 10, tried segger firmwares 4.98c, 5.10p, 5.12f, tried different hardware as well (nrf51DK and nRF51 Dongle) with 0x86 and 0x71 and 0x84. I've uploaded the log and wireshark here: www.filedropper.com/logs_6 Screenshot is not possible because the application just vanishes when the error occurs. I do not even get the chance to open wireshark. The OSX application works perfectly fine. Can't currently check with less advertisers, sorry.

[David Edwin]

This appears to be an issue in the SnifferAPI python interface. The issue is known, however the fix time is not decided. Fortunately the source code of the SnifferAPI python interface is available. I would also suggest that you use the adafruit python script with the Sniffer API sources to get what you want. See devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../