Bluetooth: NUS shell transport

The Nordic UART Service (NUS) shell transport sample demonstrates how to use the Nordic UART Service (NUS) shell transport to receive shell commands from a remote device.

Overview

When the connection is established, you can connect to the sample through the Nordic UART Service (NUS) by using a host application. You can then send shell commands, that are executed on the device that runs the sample, and see the logs. See Sending shell commands for more information about the host tools available, in nRF Connect SDK, for communicating with the sample.

Requirements

The sample supports the following development kits:

Hardware platforms

PCA

Board name

Build target

nRF5340 DK

PCA10095

nrf5340dk_nrf5340

nrf5340dk_nrf5340_cpuapp

nrf5340dk_nrf5340_cpuappns

nRF52840 DK

PCA10056

nrf52840dk_nrf52840

nrf52840dk_nrf52840

nRF52 DK

PCA10040

nrf52dk_nrf52832

nrf52dk_nrf52832

nRF52833 DK

PCA10010

nrf52833dk_nrf52833

nrf52833dk_nrf52833

nRF52833 DK (emulating nRF52820)

PCA10100

nrf52833dk_nrf52820

nrf52833dk_nrf52820

You also need an additional nRF52 development kit, like the PCA10040 for connecting using the bt_nus_shell.py script. Alternatively, you can use BLE Console for connecting, using Linux only.

Building and running

This sample can be found under samples/bluetooth/shell_bt_nus in the nRF Connect SDK folder structure.

See Building and programming a sample application for information about how to build and program the application.

Testing

The nRF Connect SDK provides two alternatives for testing the sample:

Testing using shell_bt_nus

The script file scripts/shell/bt_nus_shell.py contains a cross-platform example host application, written in Python 2.

The script uses an additional Nordic development kit, like the PCA10040, as a Bluetooth central device. It connects to the specified device and forwards all NUS traffic to the network port. You can then use a console application, like PuTTY, to connect to that port and use the shell. The default port is set to 8889.

After programming the sample to your development kits, test it by performing the following steps:

  1. Start a console application, like PuTTY, and connect through UART to the shell_bt_nus application running on the development kit to check the log. See Testing a sample application for more information on how to connect with PuTTY through UART.

  2. On the host PC, install Python 2.

  3. Run the following command to install the Bluetooth LE driver:

    pip2 install pc_ble_driver_py

  4. Run the following command to install nRF Util:

    pip2 install --user nrfutil==4.0.0

  5. Connect to your PC the nRF52 development kit meant to use the bt_nus_shell.py script.

  6. Start the bt_nus_shell.py script with the correct parameters, for example:

    bt_nus_shell.py --name BT_NUS_shell --com COM237 --family NRF52 --snr 682560213

  7. Open a console application, like PuTTY, and open a new session, setting the Connection Type to Raw and the Destination Address to 127.0.0.1:8889.

  8. Press Enter in the terminal window. A console prompt is displayed showing a log message that indicates the active connection.

  9. Enter the commands that you want to execute.

Testing using the BLE Console

See BLE Console for more information on how to test the sample using the BLE Console.

Dependencies

This sample uses the following nRF Connect SDK libraries:

In addition, it uses the following Zephyr libraries:

  • Bluetooth:

    • include/bluetooth/bluetooth.h

    • include/bluetooth/hci.h

    • include/bluetooth/uuid.h

    • include/bluetooth/gatt.h

    • samples/bluetooth/gatt/bas.h

  • Logging