Bluetooth Fundamentals Course

[Jerry Easley]

I am trying to work my way through the BLE Fundamentals course; I got through Lesson1 Ok, but lesson 2 is a problem.  In this lesson the author instructs you to add lines of code to a main.c program but he doesn't explicitly tell you where, further he obfuscates what he is doing by using macros I have never seen before and so I have no idea what he is trying to do; I got so tired of trying to figure out what he was trying to say I gave up and copied the main.c out of the solutions folder; it seems to build and flash ok, but when I start nrfconnect mobile my screen looks completely different from my screen:

This app is enigmatic and I have no documentation on how to use it and so I'm sort of flummoxed.

Clearly, either the app I downloaded from Apple or the the Course is out of date; I suspect the latter.  

Please advise.

[Einarh]

Hello

In this lesson the author instructs you to add lines of code to a main.c program but he doesn't explicitly tell you where, further he obfuscates what he is doing by using macros I have never seen before

At what steps in the exercise did you fall off? Which macros in particular did you find confusing?

Did you go through the nRF Connect SDK fundamentals course before going into the BLE course?

when I start nrfconnect mobile my screen looks completely different from my screen

Your screenshot looks similar to the iOS screenshot in the end of exercise 3, I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

Best regards,

Einar

[Jerry Easley]

Hi Einor,

The screen shot I provided you does not at all resemble the the outputs presented in the course; I guess you and I are just going to disagree on this point. I have found;out from sources external to Nordic about how to use the App, so I’m good on that issue now.

In Lesson 2, exercise 1 step 4.1.1, you are instructed to enter the following into the main.c program:

static const struct bt_data_ad[] = {

     /* some text */

     /* some text */

}

Then a little further down it says to add the following to main.c:

BT_DATA_BYTES(BT_DATA_FLAGS, BT_LE_AD_NO_BREDR),

I have no idea what the macros BT_DATA_BYTES, BT_DATA_FLAGS, nor BT_LE_AD_NO_BREDR expand into so I’m clueless about what they do.  

The author does not explicitly state where in the main.c program to place the above line and so one is left to guess.  The course is continued in the fashion; it gives me a headache trying to understand it.  Further I wonder what purpose of having the student perform these rather tedious, ill posited exercises.  After some investigation I found that along with the problem sets are solution sets.  These, unlike the rest of the course, are excellent.  I wonder why the information is presented in such an obscure way? I think that had the author just presented an annotated version of the main.c program, the course would have been much more effective and comprehensible.

I have adapted the course to my needs and am progressing through it; all I need is example code and reference material and I can understand what it does.  In my opinion the course narrative servers only to obfuscate how things work.

In any case, I have moved on; I just thought you should know I was having some problems with it.

 And, finally, yes I have taken the fundamentals course.

As far as I’m concerned, I have nothing further to pursue and see no purpose in keeping it open.

[Einarh]

Jerry Easley said:

I have no idea what the macros BT_DATA_BYTES, BT_DATA_FLAGS, nor BT_LE_AD_NO_BREDR expand into so I’m clueless about what they do.

They're all explained in detail in the exercise and there are links to their documentation, I really don't know what more you could ask for.

Jerry Easley said:

The author does not explicitly state where in the main.c program to place the above line and so one is left to guess.

You declare the advertising flags before you use them, that's all there's to it.

Jerry Easley said:

I think that had the author just presented an annotated version of the main.c program, the course would have been much more effective and comprehensible.

The solutions are available to you, so you are free to go through the course in this manner.

Jerry Easley said:

all I need is example code and reference material and I can understand what it does.

We have samples and documentation available if that is more effective learning material for you:

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/samples/bl.html

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/zephyr/samples/bluetooth/bluetooth.html

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/zephyr/connectivity/bluetooth/overview.html

Jerry Easley said:

The screen shot I provided you does not at all resemble the the outputs presented in the course

I was referring to this screenshot:

Jerry Easley said:

I just thought you should know I was having some problems with it.

Thanks man, noted