BLE data is not readable in Serial Bluetooth Mobile App

[bilal7317]

I have a device which uses "s132_nrf52" soft device. I also have the firmware of that device. Now I need to read the data from that device which is being transmitted through BLE. I have tried to connect it to my phone and used "Serial BLE" app to read data but it is showing garbage data. Is there any way that I can read the BLE data. I have the firmware if there is any guidance that I can get from it?

[Einar Thorsrud]

I am not familiar with the app you are using, but I suspect an encoding issue. If the data is sent as ASCII, you should select ASCII as the format in the app (if possible).

[bilal7317]

I have tried US-ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE but still it is showing garbage data.

I have few other questions:
1. Does nRF encrypt the data or is it just the problem of encoding selection?
2. I have their firmware so can I get any information about encoding from code?
3. Is it possible that they have use some kind of encryption? I have skimmed through code and there was no such thing but still if there is possibility then kindly let me know. 

[Einar Thorsrud]

bilal7317 said:

1. Does nRF encrypt the data or is it just the problem of encoding selection?

The data is not encrypted on the application layer (if you use pairing/bonding it would be encrypted by the stack, but decrypted before the app sees it), so that is not the problem.

bilal7317 said:

2. I have their firmware so can I get any information about encoding from code?

Yes, you can. Or perhaps it is binary data? If so, it makes no sense to display it as any form of text (regardless of which encoding yo use). you could display it as hex in that case, but you will have to understand what it means.

bilal7317 said:

3. Is it possible that they have use some kind of encryption? I have skimmed through code and there was no such thing but still if there is possibility then kindly let me know. 

On the application layer? It would be sprising, but who knows. All I know is that it is data of some sorts (meaning a string of 1's and 0's representing something.