IoT SDK - When to restart radvd when using multiple nRF52?

[MANGO]

Hi, I use the following.

• Raspberry Pi 3 (RPi3 with Raspbian Jessie 4.4) as a router,

RPi3 is connected to a Wi-Fi router to access the Internet by using the built-in Wi-Fi BLE BCM43438 chip.

• IoT SDK 0.9

• MQTT Publisher Example

• PCA10040 v1.1

• Keil MDK 5

I'm planning a project which uses multiple PCA10040 boards.

For instance, I'm about to use 4 PCA10040 and these will be connected to RPi3 which acts as a BLE enabled router.

Thanks to Stian's answer, I have connected one PCA10040 that uses MQTT publisher example.

After connecting to the PCA10040 kit, I typed

pi# service radvd restart

as informed.

/+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++/

So my questions are

1. Do I have to restart radvd after every new connection?

For instance, I connected PCA10040 (A) and restarted radvd.

When I connect another PCA10040 (B), do I have to restarted radvd again?

2. This question is also related to how many PCA10040 can be connected with the RPi3.

How many connections can the RPi3 can have with PCA10040s?

-Best Regards, Mnago

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

1. You don't need to restart radvd after every new connection. You can just start radvd before you connect any kits, and then whenever you connect a new kit it will do the router advertisement.

Remember to add the global prefix to the bt0 interface after connecting the first kit.

ifconfig bt0 add 2001:db8::1/64

You should download and install wireshark! (sudo apt-get install wireshark). Then you can monitor the bt0 interface and see the router advertisement packets and ping packets and everything. Great for debugging. (you have to start it with sudo)

2. This is dependent on the Bluetooth hardware on the RPi3.

[MANGO]

1. Thanks for recommending Wireshark! Should I use the BTLE filter policies to monitor bt0 interface?

(for ex. btle.length !=0 which I used with nRF Sniffer)

2. About "dependent on Bluetooth hardware on RPi3",

you mean I have to check about the BCM43438 chip to figure it out?

Wondered if there were any reports about maximum BLE connection with RPi3.

-Best Regards, Mango

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

1. No, because when you sniff the bt0 interface you are sniffing on the ipv6 layer. So this is above the BLE layer and after the 6lowpan packets have been translated into ipv6 packets. Since not much data is going over the bt0 interface, I would recommend to not add any filters at all.

If you want to see the BLE packets as well you can use btmon

2. Yes, you will have to check the spec on the BCM chip. Or maybe some RPi3 spec.