OpenThread otJoinerStart Never Times Out

Question

I am trying to integrate OpenThread child with an existing application on the TI CC2652R1 and am having issues trying to join/create a Thread network. Currently I have an external event that calls a function to join and start OpenThread. Below is a snip of this function relating to the join:

    bool is_commissioned = otDatasetIsCommissioned(OtStack_instance);
    otJoinerState joiner_state = otJoinerGetState(OtStack_instance);
    if(!is_commissioned && (OT_JOINER_STATE_IDLE == joiner_state)){
        otError error = otIp6SetEnabled(OtStack_instance, true);
        error = otThreadSetEnabled(OtStack_instance, true);
        error = otJoinerStart(OtStack_instance, "PSK", NULL, "Company", "Device", "0.0.0", NULL, joiner_callback, NULL);
    }

otJoinerStart never seems to resolve because joiner callback never is called and additional calls to my joining function show that the joiner state is OT_JOINER_STATE_DISCOVER and the OpenThread instance says that it is initialized. Is there a way to set the joiner callback timeout? I have looked through the documentation and could not find out how the join timeout is set.

Thanks

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 29 '20 at 01:37

Joining a Thread device to a Thread network assumes that you have a Thread network running and there is an active commissioner with the joiner's EUI64 and PSK. Make sure that these are setup before you try and call this function to join. It is also helpful to have a sniffer running on the Thread network's channel to ensure the commissioner or joiner router is responding properly.

Joining in Thread is done with an active scan on all the available channels in the IEEE 802.15.4 page 0. The time to send a Joiner request and the time the joiner waits on each channel is not immediately configurable. However these active scans usually complete within a few seconds. Your joiner callback should be getting called with a join failed condition if there are no available joiner routers in about 5 seconds.

The examples in the OpenThread github repository are written in a nortos fashion. Any application code is run in a tasklet and the main loop only calls two functions; process tasklets and process drivers. In the TI SDK we use TI-RTOS and you seem to have based your code on these examples. In general the OtStack_Task will handle processing of OpenThread and the platform driver interface; but deadlocks in a multi-threaded system can occur.

You can use ROV in CCS or IAR to check the state of the kernel and RTOS objects. In CCS with an active debug session, select; Tools >> Runtime Object View. Then check if the stack task is blocking on the API semaphore. Or if the application task is hogging up the processor. This can be due to an unpaired lock/unlock on the API semaphore, or the application task may be in a busy wait.

Immediately I don't see anything wrong with the code snippet posted.

Thanks for clarifying about the TI-RTOS example. I didn't know that every call to the OpenThread API needed to be locked/unlocked on the application code side — melonchucker, May 01 '20 at 19:30

OpenThread otJoinerStart Never Times Out

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