Installation on Windows

The following article will guide you through the CHESTER SDK installation on Windows. This guide was tested on Windows versions 10 and 11.

caution

Before you begin, make sure you comply with the article Requirements.

Installation Steps

The installation steps are split into multiple sections. In the end, you will be able to build the blinky sample from the CHESTER SDK.

Install Python

tip

You can skip this step if you already have Python installed on your system.

Download the latest stable installer from this link.

caution

Ensure the Windows installer can modify the PATH variable so the Python executable is available from any location.

Install Package Manager

tip

You can skip this step if you already have Chocolatey installed on your system.

1. Open the Windows PowerShell application with administrator rights.

   info

   You can quickly launch Windows PowerShell as an administrator from the Windows Search bar. In the search bar, type Windows PowerShell, right-click the Windows PowerShell app in the search results, and click Run as administrator in the menu.

2. Run this command:

   Get-ExecutionPolicy

3. If the previous command returns Restricted, run the following command:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned
   info

   Choose option A when asked.

4. Execute the following command:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

5. Wait a few seconds for the previous command to complete.

6. You are ready to use Chocolatey if you don't see any errors.

7. Close the Windows Powershell application.

   caution

   It is better to close it now even though we re-open it in the next section. Some important changes are reflected only with the new application session.

Install Packages

1. Open the Windows PowerShell application with administrator rights.

   info

   You can quickly launch Windows PowerShell as an administrator from the Windows Search bar. In the search bar, type Windows PowerShell, right-click the Windows PowerShell app in the search results, and click Run as administrator in the menu.

2. Disable global confirmation to avoid having to confirm the installation of individual programs:

   choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation

3. Install the CMake package:

   choco install cmake --installargs 'ADD_CMAKE_TO_PATH=System'

4. Install the remaining packages:

   choco install ninja gperf git dtc-msys2 wget 7zip

5. Close the Windows Powershell application.

Install Toolchain

1. Open the Windows PowerShell application with user rights.

2. Go to your home directory:

   Set-Location ~

3. Download the toolchain:

   wget https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.16.1/zephyr-sdk-0.16.1_windows-x86_64.7z

4. Unzip the toolchain:

   7z x zephyr-sdk-0.16.1_windows-x86_64.7z

5. Go to the toolchain directory:

   cd zephyr-sdk-0.16.1

6. Run the Zephyr SDK bundle setup script:

   setup.cmd
   tip

   Answer Y to everything.

Create Application

1. Create the directory for your application:

   mkdir chester-app
   tip

   Change the parameter chester-app to any desired name for your project directory.

   danger

   On the Windows platform, you must use the directory path without any spaces. Also, keep only ASCII letters/digits in the path. Otherwise, you may encounter issues with the toolchain.

2. Switch to your application directory:

   cd chester-app

3. Initialize the Python virtual environment:

   python -m venv .venv

4. Activate the Python virtual environment:

   .\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
   caution

   When you close the shell (or your text editor with the integrated terminal), you must reactivate the virtual Python environment. Call this command (used in the procedure above): .\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1. In the future, you may have various West workspaces with different versions of the Python packages, and thanks to the virtual environment concept, these will not suffer from version conflicts.

5. Upgrade the pip package:

   python -m pip install --upgrade pip

6. Install the West tool:

   pip install west

7. Initialize the West workspace where you want to start your project:

   west init -m https://github.com/hardwario/chester-skeleton.git --manifest-rev main

8. Set the default board to CHESTER (nRF52840):

   west config build.board chester_nrf52840

9. Synchronize the West workspace:

   west update

10. Export Zephyr environment:

    west zephyr-export

11. Install the Python dependencies:

    pip install -r zephyr/scripts/requirements.txt

    pip install -r nrf/scripts/requirements.txt

    pip install -r bootloader/mcuboot/scripts/requirements.txt

    pip install -r chester/scripts/requirements.txt
    caution

    At the end of the installation process, you will see this "error" message:

    ERROR: pip's dependency resolver does not currently take into account all the packages that are installed. This behaviour is the source of the following dependency conflicts. pyocd 0.35.1 requires pylink-square<2.0,>=1.0, but you have pylink-square 0.12.0 which is incompatible.

    It can be considered as a warning only, and it is safe to ignore it.

Test Build and Flash

1. Go to the blinky sample directory:

   cd chester/samples/blinky

2. Check that you can build the sample:

   west build

   The final build result should look like this:

   Memory region         Used Size  Region Size  %age Used
           FLASH:      112320 B         1 MB     10.71%
            SRAM:       60576 B       256 KB     23.11%
        IDT_LIST:          0 GB         2 KB      0.00%

3. If your CHESTER APP/BLE is connected with J-Link. Drivers are installed and power is on, you can flash compiled blinky code by typing

   west flash