BLE fails on STM32WB55 Nucleo board

[saraverbeecke]

I managed once (1 year ago) to get the aioble example to work on a stm32wb55 board. I now got a new STM32WB55 Nucleo board and I get tl_ble_wait_resp: timeout. and no other debug info. It has somethin to do with the RFcore, but I have no clue where to start...

There are some rfcore related files in the repo... Can anyone explain what I have to do with the following files in the Micropython repo directory of the STM32WB55 Nucleo:

• rfcore_debug.py
• rfcore_firmware.py
• rfcore_makefirmware.py

Thanks!

[andrewleech]

It's been reported that the latest WS radio firmware from ST breaks compatibility with micropython, for details see https://github.com/orgs/micropython/discussions/15522

The rfcore_makefirmware.py script is intended to convert the radio firmware files provided by ST into a format that can be loaded onto the WB55 while running micropython, after which rfcore_firmware.py can be used to flash the radio firmware (FUS & WS).

[saraverbeecke]

Does the rfcore_makefirmware.py work when using the older 1.13 version from ST?

[andrewleech]

Yes it should, that's likely the last version it was really tested with

[saraverbeecke]

I just used the v1.13 release and I can confirm it works. Thanks!

[andrewleech]

I haven't looked into it any deeper yet however on my NUCLEO_WB55 I just installed the v1.21.0 stm32wb5x_BLE_HCILayer_extended_fw.bin stack from:

• https://github.com/STMicroelectronics/STM32CubeWB/blob/v1.21.0/Projects/STM32WB_Copro_Wireless_Binaries/STM32WB5x/stm32wb5x_BLE_HCILayer_extended_fw.bin

It was loaded at address 0x080DA000 for my STM32WB5xxG (1MB Flash) chip as per the release note.
The basic ble active call worked correctly without timeout

>>> from bluetooth import  BLE
>>> BLE().active(True)
True