Master Emulator random behaviour

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Ole Morten — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 16:21:28 GMT

There is no real difference between this and the PCA10000 with the MEFW firmware, both are functional Centrals but not fully qualified. I think the solution with building a custom dongle using the upcoming Central stack is your best option.

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Leon Schmetz — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 15:54:17 GMT

ole,

By chance I am reading one of Nordics documents "Getting started with bluetooth low energy" (white paper) which states "[i]The nRF2739 master emulator platform offers a fully functional Bluetooth low energy Master device and complements the peripheral device. The master emulator is controlled through a USB connection to a computer.[/i]". Is that the best option I have?

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Ole Morten — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 12:44:53 GMT

By the way, it would also be possible to make some custom USB dongle with the upcoming Central softdevice, and use that as a production solution. This would however require you to do the development of the API between your application and the dongle yourself, possibly based on the SDK work in the SDK.

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Ole Morten — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 12:15:42 GMT

Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of good options on Windows 7. Windows 8 provides native BLE APIs that could be used, but those are not available on Windows 7.

You may be able to get something working with Broadcom's API, since they are the manufacturer of most chips used in USB dongles, but this is unfortunately not anything we really have any experience with: http://www.broadcom.com/support/bluetooth/sdk.php

I'm sorry for not being able to give better suggestions, but the ecosystem around BLE is primarily targeted towards new devices and platforms.

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Leon Schmetz — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 11:35:44 GMT

What would you recommend then if I want to communicate with one of the ble peripherals from a windows 7 system?

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Ole Morten — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 13:00:13 GMT

Currently there isn't any easy way to use any of our devices for making a USB dongle. There is a Central softdevice upcoming, but it isn't quite ready for general consumption yet. When it is, it would be possible to use this to build some kind of dongle for your specific use case. Please contact our regional sales manager for your area for details on this.

In general you will however be better off by using a ready-made Bluetooth dongle for your purpose. This will for example enable you to use the native APIs of your PC's operating system, if there are any. Such dongles may also expose some other kind of API to use BLE devices, but this is something you'd have to discuss with the dongle vendor.

One of the reasons the Master Emulator is not recommended for production solutions is that we haven't done any work on getting it Bluetooth qualified.

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Leon Schmetz — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 12:51:12 GMT

Ole,

It is a way to be compatible with one solution and open up a migration path to a new solution, or in other words to be compatible and also add custom extras. So it is important to get both data from advertising and scan response.

If the master emulator api is not for production, then how to implement a solution for hardware that does not have a ble device natively, but could work with a ble dongle and appropriate software?

RE: Master Emulator random behaviour

Ole Morten — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 11:23:48 GMT

It is by spec perfectly legal to advertise Manufacturer Specific data in both Advertisement and Scan Response, but as you've found out, the Master Emulator API doesn't support it. As you've seen, even when doing active scanning, you will sometimes get the data from the Advertisement packet and sometimes from the Scan Response.

As I said in the other question here, I've put in a feature request to fix this, but unfortunately it hasn't been done any work on it yet. I'm afraid that it would require possibly quite significant changes to the way advertisement data is handled, so I'm not sure it will be added very soon. Also remember that the Master Emulator API is only meant to be used for development and testing, and not any production quality applications.

May I ask what your use case for this is?