Step 5: Connect to nRF Cloud

The host connects to nRF Cloud with its own certificate and private key. You create a certificate authority (CA) once, use it to install credentials on the device, and register the device in your nRF Cloud account.

Run the following commands from a normal terminal, not the toolchain shell. Keep the host console port free, because the credential installer uses it. Close the serial terminal on that port first.

1. Install the nRF Cloud command-line tools (once per computer):

   pip3 install nrfcloud-utils
   

2. Create a self-signed CA certificate (once, reuse it for all your devices). Replace US with your two-letter country code:

   create_ca_cert -c US -f self_
   

   This creates self_<serial>_ca.pem, self_<serial>_prv.pem, and self_<serial>_pub.pem. Keep the CA private key safe.

3. Install the device credentials on the host. Replace <device_id> with the Device ID from step 4.4, and <console_port> with the host console port:

   device_credentials_installer \
     --ca self_<serial>_ca.pem \
     --ca-key self_<serial>_prv.pem \
     --id-str <device_id> \
     -s -d --verify --coap --local-cert --cmd-type tls_cred_shell \
     --port <console_port>
   

   On success, it saves an onboarding file:

   Saving nRF Cloud device onboarding CSV file onboard.csv...
   Onboarding CSV file saved, row count: 1
   

   The command also saves the device certificate and private key as PEM files in the current directory. Delete the device private key file afterwards.

4. Register the device in your nRF Cloud account. Get an API key from your nRF Cloud user account:

   nrf_cloud_onboard --api-key <your_api_key> --csv onboard.csv
   

5. Open the serial terminal on the host console again.

Checkpoint: The cloud module retries every 10 seconds, so within a few seconds the log shows the following:

<inf> main: Cloud connected