Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Carlos Delfino — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:04:19 GMT

Hi @Ole Morten, the suggested link is broken. please, have other link?

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Gokhan — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 09:25:54 GMT

Hello. Is there this application note for nRF52832 Development Kit?

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Bastiaan — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 08:41:34 GMT

Just for completeness, the application note mentioned is available here: https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/content/download/34055/573345/file/nAN-36.zip

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Guest — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 08:41:34 GMT

Just for completeness, the application note mentioned is available here: https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/content/download/34055/573345/file/nAN-36.zip

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Ole Morten — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 12:13:56 GMT

The application note is now out! Get it here: https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/nordic/download_resource/24020/2/80193304

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Ole Morten — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 12:05:54 GMT

Sorry for the delay in answering this. Unfortunately no news on the schedule for the app note.

As for your questions on host support, Henning, they may be better suited in a separate question. It won't be covered by the app-note. However, to answer it briefly most new OS-es from now seems to expose native GATT APIs, making it easy to connect to BLE devices and using their services. It won't give you a normal serial port, but APIs that still should be quite easy to use. This is applicable for Windows 8, iOS from version 5 and Android from 4.3.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Guest — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 08:47:14 GMT

Unfortunately no ETA, but for an actual working example of a custom service you can take a look at the UART application available here: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/nrf-uart-app#reply-402

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Bastiaan — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 08:47:14 GMT

Unfortunately no ETA, but for an actual working example of a custom service you can take a look at the UART application available here: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/nrf-uart-app#reply-402

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

henning larsen — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:44:09 GMT

Very useful information. However - one of the reasons SPP is so attractive is on the host side (PC, smartphone,,): Here you don't need to use and know special libraries to get connected to SPP. Its the usually well known serial port library which is supported in all compilers and languages.

Can you comment what is needed on the host side for this BLE solution? I know this may be too broad a scope to answer. Personally I am in Windows.

Will this aspect be mentioned in the upcoming app note?

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Philip — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:56:16 GMT

"application note explaining how to build a custom service for the S110"

This would be tremendously valuable. A basic example using the softdevice gatt functions would make this a lot easier. Although the BPS example is simple, it doesn't provide enough information to extrapolate the order of operations needed to setup the custom GATT details.

Any ETA? Shoot, a code snippit showing the services_init() function would probably be enough to help.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

sd — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 13:15:14 GMT

Hi Ole. Any news on that services app note? ;)

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

KPE — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 19:08:25 GMT

Thanks again for your prompt replies - they are incredible helpful :-)

I'll try to extend the battery service and see if I can make something useful out of it.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Ole Morten — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 18:21:12 GMT

Unfortunately, I can't really give any promises on schedule yet, especially not now in the time of holidays and variants.

In the mean time, this question, which I answered earlier may give some good hints: http://devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/what-is-the-most-efficient-way-to-transfer-data-over-ble The general tip is to structure things similar to the SDK services, make an init method that adds the service and all its characteristics, an event handler to handle events coming from the S110 and then all methods you need to do whatever is special for your service. As I said to the other person, the battery service is probably the simplest in the SDK, and should be a good starting point.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

KPE — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 17:49:13 GMT

Ole Morten - thanks for the hints on how to setup the connection interval etc. I'm now able to control the connection rate, so the next step is to actually try and implement a custom service. When do you expect an example to be ready?

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Guest — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:35:27 GMT

Thanks for your ultra fast reply. I'll take alook at it again. Could you also provide me with some hints on making a custom service (with custom data). I need to send around 1KB/sec, but I wasn't able to acheive this rate with my first BLE attempt. So I've moved to Gazelle, but BLE might be a better choice in the long run.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Ole Morten — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:15:44 GMT

The primary factor deciding how fast the S110 will be able to send data is the connection interval. Please take a look on this: http://devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/what-is-connection-parameters

To change it, the SDK includes a module called ble_conn_params, which will send update request based on the defines in the top of main.c of the application. It could be worth looking into. If you still can't make it work the way you want, I'd recommend you to create a new question, attaching your code so that we can take a look.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Guest — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:10:26 GMT

I'm looking forward to this. I tried this approach, but I wasn't able to send data fast enough. It seems like there's a limit on the number of updates pr. second, and the max length of the data returned. I'd love to have an example that shows how to do custom services.

RE: Is there a serial port profile for BLE?

Ole Morten — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:45:51 GMT

No, there isn't really any SPP equivalent. However, with BLE, it is important to understand that all the profile and service support is entirely in the application space. This is opposed to the situation in Bluetooth Classic, where it seems to me that all profiles used in the application actually had to be natively supported by the stack used.

This means that with BLE, there isn't really a need for a serial port service to transmit custom data, since you can easily make your custom service, that is specially tailored for the data your application needs to transfer. This avoids the need for cramming all kinds of data into serial packages, and most often this leads to much cleaner data handling strategies and hence applications.

We're working on an application note explaining how to build a custom service for the S110, and I'll add a link here as soon as it's published. For now, I'd recommend taking a look at the battery service (ble_bas.c, ble_bas.h), and trying to understand it at least partially and building from there.

Edit: The application note is now out; nAN-36.