How to Install Thread BR and Build an RCP on RPi

1. Overview

In this Codelab, you will learn how to build an Radio CoProcess for an OpenThread Border Router on a Raspberry Pi. OpenThread is an open-source implementation of the Thread networking protocol, designed for low-power IoT devices

What You'll Build

In this codelab, you will:

Build the Radio Co-Processor for NRF52840 dongle on a Raspberry Pi.
Learn about the concept of a radio co processor

What You'll Learn

What you will need (Pre-requisities)
How to clone radio co processor code
What prerequisites are required for the Raspberry Pi
How to build the radio co processor on the Raspberry Pi

2. What you will need (Pre-requisities)

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

A Thread Radio Co-Processor (NRF52840 dongle)
A Raspberry Pi (preferably a Raspberry Pi 3 or later)
A microSD card (16GB or larger) with Raspberry Pi OS installed
A power supply for the Raspberry Pi
Internet connection for the Raspberry Pi
Basic knowledge of using the terminal and SSH

The total codelab will take approximately a Duration of 30 minuates to complete.

3. Install the Radio Co-Processor firmware

In this example we are using the nRF52840 USB Dongle

The dongle may come pre-loaded with the older NCP firmware, so first we need to update it to the latest version with the RCP firmware. This required fetching the source and building on a laptop, then flashing the dongle.

Clone the OpenThread nRF528xx platform repository into the current directory:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/openthread/ot-nrf528xx.git

Enter the ot-nrf528xx directory:

cd ot-nrf528xx

Install OpenThread dependencies:

./script/bootstrap

Build OpenThread for the nRF52840 Dongle:

script/build nrf52840 USB_trans -DOT_BOOTLOADER=USB -DOT_THREAD_VERSION=1.2

This creates an RCP image at build/bin/ot-rcp.

Convert the RCP image to the .hex format:

cd buiLd/bin
arm-none-eabi-objcopy -O ihex ot-rcp ot-rcp.hex

Install NRFUtil

apt-get -y install libusb-1.0-0-dev python3 python3-pip sed
    pip3 install click crcmod ecdsa intelhex libusb1 piccata protobuf
    pip3 install pyserial pyyaml tqdm pc_ble_driver_py pyspinel
    pip3 install --no-dependencies nrfutil==6.1.7

This installs the utility that allows for flashing the NRF dongle

Generate the package

$ nrfutil pkg generate \
    --hw-version 52 \
    --sd-req 0x00 \
    --application-version 1 \
    --application ot-rcp.hex \
    app.zip

Flash the dongle

To put the dongle into flash mode press the reset button and when you release the red LED will glow.

$ nrfutil dfu usb-serial \
    -pkg app.zip \
    -p /dev/ttyACM0

Once the nRF52840 Radio Co-Processor is ready, you can now prepare the Raspberry Pi as an Open Thread Border Router.

4. Install the Open Thread Border Router

Install dependencies:

If you havent already install the dependencies, open the terminal and execute:

sudo apt-get install git cmake make gcc g++ autoconf libtool libssl-dev

Clone the OpenThread Border Router repository:

Run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/openthread/ot-br-posix.git
cd ot-br-posix

Install and configure OpenThread:

Follow the instructions to download the code and the run the bootstrap, which will download all the necessary dependencies, packages and tools (may take a while).

./script/bootstrap

Finally, run the OTBR setup (eth0 is my LAN connection; you can also use WiFi). I also enabled the Web GUI for evaluation, although it has no security authentication so I would not recommend running it on a real system.

INFRA_IF_NAME=eth0 WEB_GUI=1 ./script/setup

After setup you can check no errors were reported on the screen, plug in the Radio Co-Processor dongle, and then reboot with

sudo shutdown -r now

5. Further Information

Checkout the official documentation here: Project Chip - ConnectedHomeIp

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