Unsupported nfc device in lenovo T470

[Eik-S]

Unfortunately, the nfc module of lenovo T470 is not yet supported.

Neither lsusb is showing the device:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0316 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 138a:0097 Validity Sensors, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 5986:111c Acer, Inc
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:9540 Alcor Micro Corp. AU9540 Smartcard Reader
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Is there any progress on this?
Thanks.

[totakura]

I believe the NFC module is connected via I2C bus. Lets see if it is being detected there; can you install i2c-tools and run

i2cdetect -l

[Eik-S]

Output is:

i2c-3	unknown   	DPDDC-A                         	N/A
i2c-1	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpb                  	N/A
i2c-6	unknown   	Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter 	N/A
i2c-4	unknown   	DPDDC-B                         	N/A
i2c-2	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpd                  	N/A
i2c-0	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpc                  	N/A
i2c-5	unknown   	DPDDC-C                         	N/A

[totakura]

My only suspicion is the Synopsis DesignWare I2C adapter; I wonder what that is. The rest are I2C inputs for plug-and-play monitors.

Do you also dual boot Windows? If yes, could you please check the bus under which it is being detected in the device manager?

Edit: The I2C adapter is not NFC

[derTobsch]

I have the same problem and my output is

i2c-3	unknown   	DPDDC-A                         	N/A
i2c-1	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpb                  	N/A
i2c-6	unknown   	Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter 	N/A
i2c-4	unknown   	DPDDC-B                         	N/A
i2c-2	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpd                  	N/A
i2c-0	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpc                  	N/A
i2c-5	unknown   	DPDDC-C                         	N/A

I do not have a dual boot with windows. Only ubuntu 17.10 on a t470s

[derTobsch]

if someone needs support or information from the system please ask. It would be nice if there will be a driver for this nfc module.

[lbeltrame]

The device manager reports the NFC reader as NXP Semiconductors(Proximity) NXP Near Field Proximity Provider. Its "location" is under an I2C controller, "Serial I/O I2C Intel Host Controller - 9D60" (translated from my Language so it may be different from the English version). The "bus number" in the device manager is 0, the "BIOS name" is "_SB.PCI0.I2C0.NFC1".

The I2C controller listed (Intel Host Controller) is under PCI bus 0, device 21.

I'll keep Windows here for a couple more days before wiping it, so if need be, I can provide more details.

[Roxxor91]

Hey! I would like to participate in solving this issue!
From the FRU list (https://download.lenovo.com/parts/ThinkPad/t470_frubom_20170731.pdf) I found that the NFC is this one: https://fccid.io/MCLT77H747/Users-Manual/User-Manual-rev-4-3127142.html
FOXCONN Part No. T77H747.10
-> NFC (NXP NPC300) Module

[tuxflo]

The same NFC/smartcard reader is installed in the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260.
Since the driver seems not to work with linux my question is: is the (compiled) Windows version of libnfc able to use the Windows drivers (the device shows status "Usable" in the device manager)?
If yes I would like to try to compile it on my windows system and share the results...

[Coffee2CodeNL]

Same story in the T580, also the Foxconn NXP NPC300.

Wish it worked :(

[RaphaelWimmer]

Some more details and clarifications:

• NXP does not have any info on a "NPC300" chip/solution. It seems to me that this is just another name for an NFC chip from the PN7xxx range (or a name for a combination of chip and antenna).
• NXP does not seem to support libnfc but provides their own libnfc-nci for Linux according to these interesting Webinar slides.
• There are some tips on compiling the libnfc-nci kernel driver in the Webinar slides and NXP application note AN11697.
• However, there is a major problem: the chip needs to be enabled (activated) through a GPIO pin that drives VEN high. AFAICT, the device will only appear on the I2C bus if it is activated in this way. Unless you have the schematics for your motherboard, the only way to find out which of the CPU's GPIO pins is connected to the NXP chip is to activate every single one of them and check whether the NXP chip appears on the I2C bus. As lots of other stuff might be connected to these GPIO pins, I'm a little bit hesitant to try this out.
• It seems that the NXP chips usually have an I2C address of 0x28 or 0x29. So, if the chip is enabled, i2cdetect should detect a device at this address.

The correct way to find out which I2C devices are connected to an I2C bus (and are responding) is the following:

modprobe i2c-dev      # to make the I2C buses available on /dev
i2cdetect -l     # to find all I2C buses 
i2cdetect 0    # to find out which devices are connected to bus i2c-0

This can only tell you the addresses of devices on the bus (e.g., "0x28"), not what they actually are, however.
Despite the warning that "This program can confuse your I2C bus, cause data loss and worse!", probing the I2C bus this way has never caused any problems for me.

Most of the I2C buses you will see with i2cdetect -l belong to the graphics chip (e.g., everything with "DDC" in the name). The most probable bus to find the NFC chip would be the SMBus (i2c-0 smbus SMBus I801 adapter at efa0 SMBus adapter) in my case.

[pccr10001]

Hi. I found something from DSDT table in my X1C 6th.
According to the picture, I think 0x0029 is the I2C address, and GPIO lists are the pins definition.
The GPIO pin 0x006C is active high, is it VEN pin?

NPC300 datasheet

[RaphaelWimmer]

Oh, I didn't know that this can be stored in the DSDT (unfortunately, the DSDT on my HP Elitebook 1030 G2 only contains "0x0000" as pin lists).
I guess GPIO 0x6C is the connected to the IRQ pin of the NFC module which notifies the kernel that a NFC chip has been detected. GPIO 0x27 and 0x64 are probably connected to VEN and DWL_REQ (enable firmware update mode - potentially dangerous to keep enabled).

[jr64]

I have a Thinkpad T480s which uses the same NPC300 chip and I partially succeeded getting it to run under Ubuntu 18.04.
Libnfc-nci (https://github.com/NXPNFCLinux/linux_libnfc-nci/) has a mode where it uses /sys/class/gpio to communicate with the hardware. Since that seemed easier to play around with than a kernel module, I decided to start with that.

My DSDT is the same as the one @pccr10001 posted, so I guess the configuration is the same.

I edited the pins in src/halimpl/pn54x/tml/i2c/phTmlNfc_alt.h like this:

 #define I2C_BUS         "/dev/i2c-6"
 #define I2C_ADDRESS     0x29
 #define PIN_INT         360+0x6c
 #define PIN_ENABLE      360+0x64

I got the bus number from ic2detect -l which looks like this:

i2c-3	unknown   	DPDDC-A                         	N/A
i2c-1	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpb                  	N/A
i2c-6	unknown   	Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter 	N/A
i2c-4	unknown   	DPDDC-B                         	N/A
i2c-2	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpd                  	N/A
i2c-0	unknown   	i915 gmbus dpc                  	N/A
i2c-5	unknown   	DPDDC-C                         	N/A

Bus 6 was the only one that made sense to me and indeed it worked.

The i2c address and ports are from the DSDT, finally the offset 360 is from /sys/class/gpio/gpiochip360/base

Afterwards I configured the library like this (not sure if it is a pn7150 or pn7120 but I guess 7150 because according to data sheets I found the chip supports tags of type 5 which the 7120 does not):

./configure --enable-pn7150 --enable-alt --sysconfdir=/etc

Then I ran make and make install and finally was able to start the demo app:

 sudo ./nfcDemoApp poll
#########################################################################################
##                                       NFC demo                                      ##
#########################################################################################
##                                 Poll mode activated                                 ##
#########################################################################################
                              ... press enter to quit ...

Waiting for a Tag/Device...

	NFC Tag Found

		Type : 		'Type A - Mifare Classic'
		NFCID1 :    	'XX XX XX XX '
		NDEF Content : NO, mode=1, tech=8

		RAW Tag transceive failed
		Type : 		'Type A - Mifare Classic'
		NFCID1 :    	'XX XX XX XX '
		NDEF Content : NO, mode=1, tech=8

		RAW Tag transceive failed
		Type : 		'Type A - Mifare Classic'
		NFCID1 :    	'XX XX XX XX '
		NDEF Content : NO, mode=1, tech=8

		RAW Tag transceive failed
		Type : 		'Type A - Mifare Classic'
		NFCID1 :    	'XX XX XX XX '
		NDEF Content : NO, mode=1, tech=8

		RAW Tag transceive failed
	NFC Tag Lost

Waiting for a Tag/Device...

As you can see it correctly detected the Mifare classic card I tested. I'm not sure if the RAW Tag transceive failed means that something is still not working. Maybe my card is not a standard Mifare Classic but a modified version, I'm not sure and don't have anything else to test.

I guess the next step would be to try to get the proper kernel module to run, it shouldn't be too hard with the configuration already known.

One thing I noticed is that the touchpad does not seem to play well with the nfc driver. whenever I start it, the touchpad becomes laggy, the mouse pointer sometimes jumps around and acceleration seems to stop working. This persists for a few seconds, then everything works again and then it starts being buggy again. This even persists after I stop the nfc demo until I reboot the system. I don't have much experience with i2c so if anyone could point me in the right direction that would be great.

Also I have never worked with NFC before, am I correct in assuming that libnfc and libnfc-nci are not compatible so even if we got it to work, most of the software out there would have to be heavily modified to work on our machines?

[mvdnes]

@jr64 I can confirm this also works on my regular T480 with Arch Linux. Same DSDT file, and the i2c bus has the same name altough it is sometimes on /dev/i2c-0 and sometimes on /dev/i2c-1.

The demo app works with poll, and write on a small tag, and share also works with my Android phone.

I would also like to point out the path /sys/bus/i2c/devices/i2c-NXP1001:00/, which is present on my system. Maybe that can be used to determine the i2c bus more reliably.

[pccr10001]

@JC64 This solution works on my X1C and card emulation works too, I am using Ubuntu 18.04.1.