Final Product Test Setup with BLE at mass production

[Matt]

Hello, what general setup can you recommend to realize a Final Product Test only with BLE for mass production! (Without any additional copper contacts or NFC)

Some facts:

• Our BLE device is going to use the nRF52
• The final test should be programmed in LabVIEW since this is our standard at the production side
• The final Test Machine must be to 100% sure to be connected with the correct BLE device
• More than one device has to be tested at the same time and in the same square meter

What are other People doing? Any thoughts and help will be appreciated.

[endnode]

Hi Matt, we were solving similar situation with simple custom FW on Dev Kit which first got the target Adv. Address (MAC) over UART or similar wired interface from PC program (LabVIEW can do that) and then it connected to the target device based on that. This of course assumes that your target device:

• Is GAP Peripheral.
• Is advertising out of the box (or you are able to force it to advertise at given moment).
• You get Adv. Address by some out of band mean (e.g. it uses by default 43bits from chip S/N burned into FICR and you read this information during previous manufacturing process - e.g. at the time of DTM or similar RF test).

Test FW is then using S120 (or rather S130 due to continuous support). It should be possible to design similar set-up for opposite situation (when your product is GAP Central) but it would require some specific wired interface and protocol in production FW to be able to set up link with specific Adv. Address (tester in this case).

Cheers Jan