IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:57:10 GMT

Now I'm using my own app. But before we used "iBeacon locate" and it saw our beacons.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Green.xu — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:27:35 GMT

Hi Vladimir,

Congratulations! What is your ios application name ? Now I am using the ios application (AirLocation)to scan for my ibeacon(I've loaded ble_app_ibeacon into PCA10001) . But ios application doesn't see the PCA10001 as a beacon .

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:08:46 GMT

Hi Green.xu,

Yes, we solved problem (see accepted answer). It was caused by "wrong" 16 Mhz crystal. We changed it to different one and our device works properly now.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Green.xu — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 08:59:56 GMT

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Green.xu — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 08:53:38 GMT

Hi Vladimir,

Did your problem solve? Was AirLoacation your ios application? I think the problem was caused by your ios application.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:33:19 GMT

Problem was caused by wrong 16 Mhz crystal with not recomended load capacitance.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 15:12:01 GMT

Hello Dan Danknick,

I tried Heart Rate Example from sdk with the same result. As soon as I get solution I'll post it here.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Dan Danknick — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 04:14:40 GMT

Vladimir, can you alter the advertising string to be clearly non-iBeacon and then test to see if your iPhone will enumerate it to any apps (like LightBlue)? Assuming all the RF works the only thing I can think of is that your MAC changed between the PCA100001 and whatever 51822 you put on your new PCB. Maybe iOS 7 is swallowing your advertisement because it is only somewhat iBeacon-like.

Just tossing out an idea... please post your final resolution for us all to learn from!

Dan

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 18:29:57 GMT

Thank you for your responses. Tomorrow I'll post a regular support case with Altium files.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 18:10:23 GMT

Hello Zach Pope,

We used iPhones from many different distances: 5 m, 3 m, 1 m, 10 mm, 5 mm. But dongle sees our board through couple walls. And from RSSI value for the board, which I can see from master control panel I think that antenna on it works not so bad. Strange case indeed.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Zach Pope — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 17:40:48 GMT

Random thought, perhaps the dongle and the eval board from Nordic have ideal layouts and antenna structures, resulting in a much better link budget. The new board may have matching issues and a less efficient antenna structure, along with the host being the iPhone which is known to have much less receive sensitivity then a simple USB dongle.

Just double check and make sure that iPhone is quite close to your device with no obstructing objects. Probably not the case, but these symptoms sound quite odd.

Good luck on the beacon!

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Ole Morten — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 16:02:44 GMT

Yes, I've never heard anything like this. Have you had your board schematics and layout reviewed? If not, I'd strongly recommend you to post a regular support case including schematics and Gerber (or Altium) files and as for review. The only thing I can think of is some kind of HF-crystal problem, but I find it very strange that the PCA10000 dongle can see it if that's the case.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 15:55:32 GMT

I've tried LightBlue. It doesn't see my device as peripheral when it (device) works as a beacon. I've tried ble_app_hrs and it doesn't work either. Dongle sees advertisment from both PCA10001 and my board. And LightBlue sees only PCA10001. We have tried different iphones, but result always the same. At the end of january new boards with different layout will arrive and I hope they won't have this problem. But I'm little affraid, that this situation could repeat. From answer on this question and research on web and this portal I assume that this situation, that we are having now is exceptional. Is that true?

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Ole Morten — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 11:18:21 GMT

If you use a regular Bluetooth discovery app, are you then able to see both your devices? You can try this with for example LightBlue: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lightblue-bluetooth-low-energy/id557428110?mt=8

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Vladimir — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 17:47:08 GMT

Yes, I've tried to change major/minor, UUID (so both boards have different values). I've tried different firmware, the one from \nrf51822\board\nrf6310\s110\experimental\ble_app_ibeacon. PCA10001 works in each case, and my board doesn't, but dongle always sees advertisment.

RE: IPhone BLE vs nrf51822

Ole Morten — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 14:30:21 GMT

I haven't worked a lot with this, but it seems to me that you have the exact same values for all the fields for both your beacons. As far as I can read Apple's documentation, that's not supposed to be done, so it could be that it ignores the second one (which it can see is different based on its address). Have you tried to change the major and/or minor number of it?