nRF51822 Peripheral with Passkey

Question

Hi,
like many others, I'm confused with Peripheral Passkey Connection. 
 I'm playing with the ble_app_hrs, in order to be able to setup a Connection Passkey (for the moment I would like to have a static hard-coded passkey).
The goal of my application is to connect to the nRF51822 Peripheral using a Smartphone/Tablet and to be prompted to input a Passkey. 
 On main.c I set up these sec parameters: 
 
#define SEC_PARAM_TIMEOUT 30 
#define SEC_PARAM_BOND 1
#define SEC_PARAM_MITM 0
#define SEC_PARAM_IO_CAPABILITIES BLE_GAP_IO_CAPS_KEYBOARD_ONLY
#define SEC_PARAM_OOB 0
#define SEC_PARAM_MIN_KEY_SIZE 7
#define SEC_PARAM_MAX_KEY_SIZE 16

 
 Then in the function on_ble_evt(ble_evt_t * p_ble_evt) in the case BLE_GAP_EVT_CONNECTED I've added err_code = sd_ble_gap_authenticate(m_conn_handle, &m_sec_params); to let the Peripheral initiate the security establishment (is this correct?). 
 The call of this function generates the event: BLE_GAP_EVT_SEC_INFO_REQUEST which I think I should reply with sd_ble_gap_sec_info_reply , is it correct? 
 I can't understand how to fill the parameters for the sd_ble_gap_sec_info_reply 
 Are those sec parameters correct for this application purposes? 
 Thanks for any help/suggestions. 
 Regards,
Samuele.

Ole Morten · Accepted Answer

In general, using a static passkey isn't really possible with BLE. It has previously been discussed for example here , here and here , and I'd recommend you to read all of those, as they all include information that may be useful to find a good security scheme for your application. 
 Calling sd_ble_gap_sec_info_reply() is most often handled by the bond manager. For an example of how to use the bond manager, you can refer to this branch of the nrf51-ble-app-lbs example application. 
 For completeness, if you want to implement this yourself instead, you are supposed to reply to this event with the keys for the connected device. You should be able to find the connected device in your database of bonded devices by using the information in the sec_info_request event, and you should pass the LTK that should be used back to the softdevice in the _reply() call. You can refer to this MSC , as well as the bond manager code for details. Beware that implementing a bond manager is not trivial, and will require a good understanding of the relevant parts of the Core Specification, in particular Volume 3, Part H. 
 Finally, using _authenticate() is not recommended, especially not when working with iOS devices, as explained in Apple's Bluetooth Accessory Design Guidelines . Instead, you should make sure to set the permissions as you want on your characteristics (see the usage of BLE_GAP_CONN_SEC_MODE_SET_ENC_NO_MITM() above), so that an error will be returned to the Central when it tries to do something that requires encryption. This error will then trigger most Central devices to automatically start bonding.

nRF51822 Peripheral with Passkey

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