Handle multiple nRF51822 devices on the same room

RE: Handle multiple nRF51822 devices on the same room

Carles — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 15:49:49 GMT

Sorry I misread your comment. My advice would be to go for a Linux-based machine with several BR/EDR (dual-mode) radios connected as a master. You can control those from D-Bus and should cover your use case.

RE: Handle multiple nRF51822 devices on the same room

Carles — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:53:14 GMT

To be honest for a master to connect to 16 slaves at the same time, I am not sure you're gonna find one that allows that. Our own S120 allows up to 8 slaves at the same time, but I cannot speak for other chipset manufacturers (especially those making dual-mode devices) and the amount of concurrent slaves they support.

RE: Handle multiple nRF51822 devices on the same room

Nicola — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:46:45 GMT

Thank you Carles! Do you also have any idea of what could be the best choice for the master? There are not a lot of BLE Access Point on the market (I have found only one of that!), so I was planning to use a PC with 3/4 dongles (eg. Bluegiga) or multiple PC with dongles... What do you think about?

RE: Handle multiple nRF51822 devices on the same room

Carles — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:40:15 GMT

Hi there,

This will of course vary wildly depending on several factors, but I can tell you that I have been in extremely crowded rooms in terms of 2.4GHz devices (sometimes 100+) and BLE has kept up without serious problems, so 16 devices does not sound like it should be a problem in principle.

About the data rate, that will be mostly limited by connection intervals and the ability of your master (the PC) to keep up with 16 slaves and send fast enough, the slaves themselves should have no problem at all with that sort of data rate.

Carles