Hello!

Prereq: I have nRF Connect 2.5.1 via the Desktop app installed, since I’ve tried using nRF/Zephyr earlier for another nRF52-based platform.
Trying now to get started with the Feather, but i’m bumping into a bunch of problems.

I have many years of experience in embedded Cortex-M3 environments using gnu-arm-none-aebi / JLink, so I have a good understanding of how embedded development in general works.

A)
“Init repo” fails:

Executing task: west init -m https://github.com/circuitdojo/nrf9160-feather-examples-and-drivers.git --mf west.yml --mr v2.4.x 

FATAL ERROR: already initialized in /opt/nordic/ncs/v2.5.1, aborting.
Note:
 
In your environment, ZEPHYR_BASE is set to:
/opt/nordic/ncs/v2.5.1

This forces west to search for a workspace there.
Try unsetting ZEPHYR_BASE and re-running this command.

The terminal process "/bin/bash '-l', '-c', 'west init -m https://github.com/circuitdojo/nrf9160-feather-examples-and-drivers.git --mf west.yml --mr v2.4.x'" terminated with exit code: 1.

then after updating a bunch of modules:

Executing task: pip install -r zephyr/scripts/requirements.txt 

ERROR: Could not open requirements file: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'zephyr/scripts/requirements.txt'

B)
So I tried the “nRF Connect SDK for VS Code”, where I managed to build the blinky example.

Placed the Feather into bootloader mode (MODE + RST - MODE), then:

newtmgr -c serial image upload build/zephyr/app_update.bin

didn’t work, of course, so:

newtmgr conn add serial type=serial connstring=/dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART

Then tried again, and nothing. I tried power cycling the device, i.e. did not place it in DFU mode, but same result. “Error: NMP timeout”.

My first goal is to 1) build a hello world app, and 2) upload it to the hardware, and (later) 3) use my BMP for debugging.

In general, I’d much prefer to use the official “nRF Connect for VSCode” extension, so I always get the latest official code, but the documentation only refers to the “Circuit Dojo Feather for VSCode” extension, which

  1. download its own apps and
  2. sets up its own opaque environment.

It is not obvious how to integrate this with the normal nRF way of doing projects w/ workspaces. I’m a newbie to the nRF/West style of doing things, but unfortunately, the Circuit Dojo extension only confuses me even more 🙁

@mikaelj aoery you’re having trouble. I’d recommend you follow the instructions on the documentation fully. The extension does not play nice with Nordic’s tools so I recommend disabling and removing from your path.

If you insist on using Nordic’s tools by all means. Remember you must put your board in bootloader mode and also make sure the sample you’re compiling has the bootloader enabled (it should generate an app_update.bin in the build/zephyr/ folder).

# Enable Zephyr application to be booted by MCUboot
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y

Many of the default SDK samples do not have this enabled so they will not work with the nRF9160 Feather out of the box.

P.S. the extension is completely open source. There’s nothing proprietary about it. You can see what it does here:

https://github.com/circuitdojo/zephyr-tools

    jaredwolff Thank you for your swift reply!

    Also got flashing working, selecting cu.SLAB_USBtoUART. none of the three others worked, as a heads-up to others reading. :-)

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