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Zigbee Shell

Overview

This Zigbee Shell sample demonstrates a Zigbee router (with the possibility of being a coordinator) that uses the Zigbee shell library for interaction.

You can use this sample for several purposes, including:

  • Initial configuration of the network - forming a network as coordinator, adding devices to the network with the install codes, setting the extended PAN ID.
  • Benchmarking - measuring time needed for a message to travel from one node to another.

Requirements

Before you start, check that you have the required hardware and software:

Building the sample

Before you start building, remember to set up the environment first.

Use the following steps to build the Zigbee Shell sample on the command line.

  1. Open a terminal window.

  2. Go to my-workspace/ncs-playground directory created in the Setting up the environment section.

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    cd my-workspace/ncs-playground

  3. Build each sample using the west command, specifying the board (following the -b option) as connectkit_nrf52840:

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    west build -p always -b connectkit_nrf52840 samples/zigbee/shell

    Tip

    The -p always option forces a pristine build, and is recommended for new users. Users may also use the -p auto option, which will use heuristics to determine if a pristine build is required, such as when building another sample.

  4. After running the west build command, the build files can be found in build/zephyr.

Flashing the firmware

The sample is designed to work with the UF2 Bootloader, so that you can easily flash the sample using the UF2 Bootloader. The firmware can be found in build/zephyr with the name zephyr.uf2.

To flash the firmware, complete the following steps:

  1. Push and hold the USER button and plug your board into the USB port of your computer. Release the USER button after your board is connected. The RGB LED turns green.

  2. It will mount as a Mass Storage Device called UF2BOOT.

  3. Drag and drop zephyr.uf2 onto the UF2BOOT volume. The RGB LED blinks red fast during flashing.

  4. Reset the board and the sample will start running.

Testing

After flashing the Zigbee Shell firmware, complete the following steps to test it:

  1. Connect the first shell device to your computer using the USB-C Cable.

  2. Open up a serial terminal, specifying the correct serial port that your computer uses to communicate with the first shell device:

    Open up a terminal and run:

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    screen <serial-port-name> 115200
    1. Start PuTTY.

    2. Configure the correct serial port and click Open:

  3. To set the first shell device to work as coordinator, run the following shell command:

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    bdb role zc

    This shell device is now the shell coordinator node.

  4. Run the following command on this shell coordinator node to start a new Zigbee network:

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    bdb start

  5. Run the following command on the second shell device:

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    bdb start

    This shell device joins the network.

  6. To acquired short address of the second shell device, run the following command:

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    zdo short

    You should see the output, similar to the following:

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    uart:~$ zdo short
50b4
Done

  7. To check the communication between the nodes, issue a ping request on the coordinator with the acquired short address value and the payload size:

    zcl ping zdo_short_address payload_size

    For example:

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    zcl ping 0x50b4 10

    The ping time response is returned when the ping is successful, followed by the additional information from the endpoint logger. For example:

    uart:~$ zcl ping 0x50b4 10
Ping time: 17 ms
Done
[00:08:20.789,245] <inf> zigbee.eprxzcl: Received ZCL command (0): src_addr=0x50b4(short) src_ep=64 dst_ep=64 cluster_id=0xbeef profile_id=0x0104 cmd_dir=0 common_cmd=0 cmd_id=0x01 cmd_seq=0 disable_def_resp=1 manuf_code=void payload=[cdcdcdcdcdcdcdcdcdcd] (0)

    Tip

    To disable the logs from Zigbee endpoint logger:

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    log disable zigbee.eprxzcl

    To enable logs from Zigbee endpoint logger and set its logging to the info level (inf)

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    log enable inf zigbee.eprxzcl