Bluetooth Low Energy: NUS shell transport¶

Overview¶

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 over Bluetooth®.

When the connection is established, you can connect to the sample through the Nordic UART Service (NUS) by using Web Device CLI. You can then send shell commands that are executed on the device running the sample.

Requirements¶

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

• 1x nRF52840 MDK USB Dongle(or w/Case option)
• Chrome 56+ browser with Web Bluetooth supported
• A computer running macOS, Linux, or Windows 7 or newer

Building the sample¶

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

Use the following steps to build the NUS shell transport 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.

   1	cd my-workspace/ncs-playground

3. Build the sample using the west command, specifying the board (following the -b option) as dongle_nrf52840:

   1	west build -p always -b dongle_nrf52840 samples/ble/shell_bt_nus

   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 button and plug your dongle into the USB port of your computer. Release the button after your dongle 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. Re-plug the dongle and the sample will start running.

Testing¶

After flashing the firmware to your dongle, complete the following steps to test it:

1. Plug the dongle into the USB port of your computer.

2. Open the Web Device CLI page in the Chrome brower:

   Web Device CLI

3. Click Connect to scan devices.

4. Pair BT_NUS_shell discovered in the list.
5. Run help to print the help message.