The serial interface to the mesh stack provides a way for external devices to interact with a device running the mesh stack via a serial port. The interface is based on the nRF8001 interface and runs a simple length-opcode-data format for both commands and events.
Each command from the host to the nRF5 will get a command response event in return, except for the echo command, which gets an echo response.
At bootup, the nRF5 sends a "Device started" event, after which it is ready to receive commands from the host.
The serial frame format is 8n1, 115200 baud with hardware flow control enabled.
All serial packets, commands, responses, and events are encapsulated in serial packets following the format detailed in the table below. All multi-byte values are sent in little endian format.
Packet format:
| Field | Size (bytes) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 1 | Length of the serial command, response, or event. Does not include the length field itself. |
| Opcode | 1 | Opcode of the serial command, response, or event. |
| Payload | 0-n | Parameters or data of the command. |
A detailed overview over all serial commands and events can be found in Serial commands and Serial events.
The Mesh serial interface uses a set of status codes to communicate the result of a command. A list of potential status codes can be found here: Serial status codes.
There is an interactive Python script for communicating with a device running the serial interface. Read the Interactive PyACI README to get started.