nRF Connect Android app, test XML tag: unbond

[Eliot Stock]

This is a question for the developers of the nRF Connect Android app, or anyone else who might have the details.

The app has a really useful test hardness in it now that lets you write functional BLE tests as XML and run them via adb from a host machine. One of the tags in the XML dialect for the test definitions is "unbond". What does this do, exactly?

If it destroys the bond on the Android app (central) side, how does it do that? There's no API for that in the Android BLE stack, that I can find.

If it destroys the bond on the nRF5x (peripheral, in my case) side, how does it do that? I need that in my app but have done it in a very manual way, adding a custom characteristic that, when written to, drops the connection and then deletes bonds from the peer manager. Is there a better way.

If it destroys one but not the other, does that put me in a "half bonded" state, where one side has a key that no longer works?

[Aleksander Nowakowski]

Hi Eliot,

This tag removes the bond information only from the Android device. If you need to remove bond also from your peripheral then before executing this tag you need to send a command like you described.

The bond is removed using reflections. Check github.com/.../BaseDfuImpl.java and the removeBond(..) method here. In case you are connected it also disconnects.

Have s nice weekend, Aleksander

[Eliot Stock]

Great, thank you. I was familiar with the reflection approach, but thought it a bit risky in that it's not part of the public API and might disappear at some point. But I guess I'll use it anyway.