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Installation on macOS

The following article will guide you through the CHESTER SDK installation on macOS. This guide was tested on versions macOS 12 (Monterey) and macOS 13 (Ventura).

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 Package Manager​

tip

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

  1. Open the Terminal application.

  2. Install the Homebrew package manager (if not already installed in your system):

    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

  3. Reboot the system:

    sudo reboot

Install Packages​

Install the following Homebrew packages:

brew install cmake ninja gperf python3 ccache qemu dtc wget libmagic

Install Toolchain​

  1. Create a target directory for the toolchain:

    mkdir -p $HOME/.local/opt

  2. Download and unpack the toolchain:

    If you have the ARM processor, use this command:

    wget -c https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.16.1/zephyr-sdk-0.16.1_macos-aarch64.tar.xz -O - | xz -d -c - | tar xv -C $HOME/.local/opt

    If you have the Intel processor, use this command:

    wget -c https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/sdk-ng/releases/download/v0.16.1/zephyr-sdk-0.16.1_macos-x86_64.tar.xz -O - | xz -d -c - | tar xv -C $HOME/.local/opt

  3. Run the Zephyr SDK bundle setup script:

    $HOME/.local/opt/zephyr-sdk-0.16.1/setup.sh

Create Application​

  1. Create the directory for your application and switch to it:

    mkdir chester-app && cd chester-app
    tip

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

  2. Initialize the Python virtual environment:

    python3 -m venv .venv

  3. Activate the Python virtual environment:

    source .venv/bin/activate
    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): source .venv/bin/activate. 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.

  4. Upgrade the pip package:

    pip install --upgrade pip

  5. Install the West tool:

    pip install west

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

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

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

    west config build.board chester_nrf52840

  8. Synchronize the West workspace:

    west update

  9. Export Zephyr environment:

    west zephyr-export

  10. 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