Setting Up the nRF5 SDK for Mesh Environment¶

This section describes how to set up the nRF5 SDK for Mesh development environment on your host operating system.

Set up the toolchain¶

To build the Mesh applications, a toolchain based on CMake is required. Follow one of the following guides for your host operating system:

macOS
Windows
Linux

macOS¶

Install Homebrew by following instructions on the Homebrew site.
Install CMake and Ninja using brew:
```
brew install cmake ninja
```
Download and install the GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain. The 6-2017-q2-update version is recommended. Then ensure the path is added to your OS PATH environment variable.
```
# in ~/.bash_profile, add the following script
export PATH="<path to install directory>/gcc-arm-none-eabi-6-2017-q2-update/bin:${PATH}"
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if the path is set correctly:
```
arm-none-eabi-gcc --version
```
Download the nRF5x-Command-Line-Tools-OSX, then extract the .tar archive anywhere on your filesystem. Ensure the extracted directory is added to your OS PATH environment variable.
```
# in ~/.bash_profile, add the following script
export PATH="<the path to the extracted directory>:${PATH}"
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if mergehex works:
```
mergehex --version
```
Install the latest stable version of pyOCD via pip as follows:
```
pip install -U pyocd
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if pyocd works:
```
pyocd --version
```

Windows¶

The easiest way to install the native Windows dependencies is to first install Chocolatey, a package manager for Windows. If you prefer to install dependencies manually, you can also download the required programs from their respective websites.

Install Chocolatey by following the instructions on the Chocolatey install page.
Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) as an Administrator
Optionally disable global confirmation to avoid having to confirm installation of individual programs:
```
choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation
```

Install CMake:

choco install cmake --installargs 'ADD_CMAKE_TO_PATH=System'

Install the rest of the tools, and close the Administrator command prompt window when finished.
```
choco install git python ninja
```
Download and install the GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain. The 6-2017-q2-update version is recommended. Run the installer and follow the given instructions. Upon completion, check the Add path to environment variable option. Then verify if the compiler works:
```
arm-none-eabi-gcc --version
```
Download the nRF5x-Command-Line-Tools for Win32. Run the installer and follow the given instructions. Then verify if mergehex works:
```
mergehex --version
```
Install the latest stable version of pyOCD via pip as follows:
```
pip install -U pyocd
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if pyocd works:
```
pyocd --version
```

Linux¶

This section describes how to set up the development environment on Ubuntu. The steps should be similar for other Linux distributions.

Ensure your host system is up to date before proceeding.
```
sudo apt-get update
```
```
sudo apt-get upgrade
```

Install the following packages using your system’s package manager.

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends git cmake ninja-build python3-pip

Download and install the GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain. The 6-2017-q2-update version is recommended. Then ensure the path is added to your OS PATH environment variable.
```
# in ~/.bash_profile, add the following script
export PATH="<path to install directory>/gcc-arm-none-eabi-6-2017-q2-update/bin:${PATH}"
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if the path is set correctly:
```
arm-none-eabi-gcc --version
```
Download the nRF5x-Command-Line-Tools-Linux-xxx, then extract the .tar archive anywhere on your filesystem. Ensure the extracted directory is added to your OS PATH environment variable.
```
# in ~/.bash_profile, add the following script
export PATH="<the path to the extracted directory>:${PATH}"
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if mergehex works:
```
mergehex --version
```
Install the latest stable version of pyOCD via pip as follows:
```
pip install -U pyocd
```
Type the following in your terminal to verify if pyocd works:
```
pyocd --version
```

Clone the repository¶

Clone the grove-mesh-kit repository from GitHub:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/makerdiary/grove-mesh-kit

Or if you have already cloned the project, you may update the submodule:

git submodule update --init

Install the nRF5 SDK¶

The nRF5 SDK for Mesh now requires the nRF5 SDK to compile.

Download the SDK file nRF5_SDK_v15.2.0_9412b96 from www.nordicsemi.com.

Extract the zip file to the grove-mesh-kit repository. This should give you the following folder structure:

./grove-mesh-kit/
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── config
├── docs
├── examples
├── firmware
├── mkdocs.yml
└── nrf_sdks
    ├── README.md
    ├── nRF5-SDK-for-Mesh
    └── nRF5_SDK_v15.2.0_9412b96

To use the nRF5 SDK you first need to set the toolchain path in makefile.windows or makefile.posix depending on platform you are using. That is, the .posix should be edited if your are working on either Linux or macOS. These files are located in:

<nRF5 SDK>/components/toolchain/gcc

Open the file in a text editor (Sublime is recommended), and make sure that the GNU_INSTALL_ROOT variable is pointing to your GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain install directory.

GNU_INSTALL_ROOT ?= $(HOME)/gcc-arm-none-eabi/gcc-arm-none-eabi-6-2017-q2-update/bin/
GNU_VERSION ?= 6.3.1
GNU_PREFIX ?= arm-none-eabi

Next Steps¶

Congratulations! Now you can try to build and run the mesh examples. Head to Building & Running the examples section for more details.

Create an Issue¶

Interested in contributing to this project? Want to report a bug? Feel free to click here: