6LowPAN node to node with BLE

[Tim]

Hello,

I was reading about that 6LowPAN is being used in the IoT SDK. I have a few questions about this.

1. Can the 6LoWPAN node communicate with another 6LoWPAN node.
2. Can these nodes capture BLE tag messages.
3. Is a 6LoWPAN router required to setup this system

Thanks in advance,

Tim

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

1. As described in the introduction section of the IoT SDK documentation, Each IoT device can directly communicate with other devices using their IPv6 address; no matter if the other device is connected to the same router or is located somewhere else on the internet, and no matter if the other device is using a BLE link or not.
2. All data will be wrapped in IPv6 packets and sent to the router over the BLE link.
3. Unfortunately, nRF IoT SDK and softdevice only support the node-role of Bluetooth 6LoWPAN, not the router role. This means that you need a router, for instance a BLE enabled router or a Raspberry Pi with the bluetooth_6lowpan module compiled and enabled, to connect the nodes.

Best regards,

Jørgen

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

As I mentioned in point 3 of my first answer, the IoT softdevice only support the node-role. This means that the nodes cannot connect to each other, only to a router. You can have connections between the nodes by sending IPv6 packets to the node IPv6 address, but this will only work through a router that can forward the packets to the correct address.