How to Set Up a Matter Thread Lighting Device on Nordic nRF52840 Dongle - canonical/openthread-border-router-snap GitHub Wiki

This guide demonstrates how to build and flash a Matter Thread lighting application firmware onto a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 Dongle, thereby transforming the dongle into a Matter Thread device.

Complete the following steps to build and flash the firmware:

Environment Setup

Ubuntu 23.04 OS
nRF52840 dongle

Version tested in this guide

Nordic Semiconductor's nRF Connect for Desktop: 4.2.0
Nordic Semiconductor's nRF Connect SDK: 2.4.2
Matter SDK: 1.1.0.1

1. Setting up the Build Environment

First, follow Using native shell for setup guide's steps 1 and 2 to install nRF command-line tools, GN meta-build system, and nRF Connect SDK.

Once nRF Desktop is installed, change its permissions, install dependencies, and run it:

chmod +x nrfconnect-4.2.0-x86_64.appimage
sudo apt install libfuse2
./nrfconnect-4.2.0-x86_64.appimage

2. Installing nRF Connect SDK

In nRF Connect for Desktop, first, install Toolchain Manager. Then, open Toolchain Manager to install nRF Connect SDK v2.4.2.

Once the installations are complete, click the down arrow next to the nRF Connect SDK version you installed and select Open Terminal or Open Bash.

3. Installing and Activating Matter SDK

Install the Matter SDK with a shallow clone for the Linux platform:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip.git --depth=1 --branch=v1.1.0.1
cd ~/connectedhomeip/
scripts/checkout_submodules.py --shallow --platform linux
git submodule update --init

Note If you get ImportError: libffi.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory during activation, install libffi7 as described here.

Activate Matter build environment:

cd ~/connectedhomeip/

# Due to potential Python incompatibility issues that could disrupt the upcoming build, please skip all non-core Python requirements
sed -i '/^-r requirements/ s/./#&/' ./scripts/setup/requirements.txt

PROTOCOL_BUFFERS_PYTHON_IMPLEMENTATION=python source scripts/activate.sh

Update the nRF Connect SDK to the most recent supported revision for Matter SDK:

python3 scripts/setup/nrfconnect/update_ncs.py --update

4. Building the Matter Lighting Example Firmware

By default, support for DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) using Matter OTA(Over-The-Air) is enabled. This needs to be disabled for the nRF52840 dongle because it doesn't have the external flash required for DFU:

cd examples/lighting-app/nrfconnect
west build -b nrf52840dongle_nrf52840 -- -DCONF_FILE=./prj_no_dfu.conf

The output zephyr.hex file will be available at: ~/connectedhomeip/examples/lighting-app/nrfconnect/build/zephyr/zephyr.hex.

5. Flashing the Firmware on the Dongle using nRF Desktop

Refer to the "Programming the nRF52840 Dongle" section in nRF Connect Programmer guide to flash the firmware on the dongle.

Note If you encounter the issue "Could not properly detect an unknown device. Please make sure you have nrf-udev installed", install nrf-udev from here.

Upon successful flashing, logs will display:

Uploading image through SDFU: 100%
All DFU images have been written to the target device
Target device closed

6. Running the Matter Thread Lighting Device

Connect the dongle to a USB port, then use minicom to open a serial consol and start the lighting app:

sudo apt install minicom
sudo minicom -D /dev/ttyACM0 -b 115200