[HELP] nimBLE central (companion to examples/nimble) on a nrf52840-dk

[maxikrie]

Description

Hello,
I have successfully tested the examples/nimble app on a nrf52840-dk acting as a BLE peripheral. For this, I am connecting to the board with a smartphone and the nrf connect app. Now, I am trying to create a BLE central on a second nrf52840-dk, which can connect to the peripheral.

So far, I have examined and copied from esp example and mynewt-nimble example. However, when I perform a BLE scan for peripherals, ble_gap_disc or ble_gap_ext_disc (with MYNEWT_VAL(BLE_EXT_ADV)) fail with error code 513 hinting to a timeout in ble_hs_hci_cmd_tx.

I am happy to provide my code if necessary, but wanted to reach out first if anybody accomplished to get a BLE central to scan for peripherals?

Thanks!

Verification

• I have verified before submitting the report.

[maxikrie]

@raiden00pl I see that you added the nrf52840-dk:sdc_nimble config. Thank you for this, it helped me a lot to get started.

Does the above issue mean anything to you and/or have you managed to get a central as a companion to your example running? From the examples I referenced it shouldn't be hard to get at least the scanning running, but I am stuck with the issue I mentioned.

[acassis]

@maxikrie I think Nimble integration on NuttX is something that many people are interested on. Could you please include a Documentation/ maybe it could be included like a Guide: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/guides/index.html

@pkarashchenko when you used BLE with ESP32xx did you used Nimble stack as well?

[maxikrie]

@acassis So far, I only have the existing nrf52840-dk:sdc_nimble example running, which employs the Nimble stack with the Nordic Softdevice controller to create a BLE peripheral. My goal is to also have a BLE central either on another nrf52840-dk or some ESP32 board with Nimble. As I understand @pkarashchenko may already has a ESP32 configuration with Nimble (not sure if peripheral or central), which he will provide soon.

I am happy to provide a guide if I have it running.

[raiden00pl]

hi, I haven't had a chance to play with nimble as a BLE central role. The problem is rather on the nimble side (maybe something missing in nimble configuration). Last time I looked, nrf52840-dk/sdc was working as a central with NuttX BLE host implementation.
I think we should have nimble example with a BLE central role in nuttx-apps and port more examples from nimble (https://github.com/apache/mynewt-nimble/tree/master/apps)

[maxikrie]

I have found the issue, which was a wrong configuration. I did set the nimble role to central, but I was missing that the softdevice role also needs to be set (otherwise it links the wrong nrxlib library).

The following needs to be set in the defconfig;

CONFIG_NIMBLE_ROLE_CENTRAL=y
CONFIG_NRF52_SDC_CENTRAL=y
CONFIG_NRF52_SDC_PERIPHERAL_COUNT=0

I managed to connect between a nrf52840-dk running nuttx with nimble as a central, and a ESP32 running the esp-idf with nimble as peripheral. Once I have everything in nuttx with nimble only, I will create a pull request.

[acassis]

@maxikrie please submit a board config to mainline with the fix

[raiden00pl]

@acassis there is no nimble central example application in apps now, so a new board config doesn't make sense here :)

[acassis]

@acassis there is no nimble central example application in apps now, so a new board config doesn't make sense here :)

So the first step is creating a bluetooth central example application first. @maxikrie do you have some basic example that could be used to demonstrate it?

[maxikrie]

@acassis Yes, I just got it working. I will provide the source with a config for the nrf52840-dk soon, probably next week.

[maxikrie]

@acassis @raiden00pl
I have created a pull request on the nuttx-apps repository, which adds nimble_bleprph and nimble_blecent working in companion. These are the pull requests for apps (apache/nuttx-apps#2807) and board configs (#14566)