combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

FormerMember — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 14:26:15 GMT

Yes, it should be possible to have one beacon advertiser and one "regular" advertiser at the same time.

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

frogofmagic — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 07:50:54 GMT

@Kristin, Hi, I saw the document said: "The example using the advertiser beacon is based on Heart Rate service example and starts advertising as a beacon when in a connection." Is it possible to start beacon when disconnect? I want both advertising and beacon working at the same time.

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

FormerMember — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:53:59 GMT

Yes, the TX power levels that can be used can be found both in the nRF51 Series reference manual and in nrf51_bitfields.h (RADIO_TXPOWER_TXPOWER_0dBm, RADIO_TXPOWER_TXPOWER_Pos4dBm, etc.)

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

johnofleek — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 16:43:29 GMT

Thanks - where should I look for the documentation & dBm / values to use with RADIO->TXPOWER? Should I use nRF51 series reference manual -> Table 112: TXPOWER ? It looks like setting dBm is represented as an int8 in a uint32?

Is a header file available for TXPOWER levels?

Pos4dBm 0x04 +4 dBm 0dBm 0x00 0 dBm Neg4dBm 0xFC -4 dBm Neg8dBm 0xF8 -8 dBm Neg12dBm 0xF4 -12 dBm Neg16dBm 0xF0 -16 dBm Neg20dBm 0xEC -20 dBm Neg30dBm 0xD8 -30 dBm

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

FormerMember — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 14:56:18 GMT

When in the timeslot, the TX power has to be set using RADIO->TXPOWER directly.

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

johnofleek — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 14:33:27 GMT

Many thanks - I'm experimenting with option 2. Does anyone know how to set the TX power for the timeslot advertising?

I guess as expect sd_ble_gap_tx_power_set(BLE_TX_POWER); sets the TX power for the standard advertising. But not timeslot advertising

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

endnode — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 13:25:13 GMT

Hi John,

If you want to combine just limited number of advertisements (e.g. 2 or 3) and your desired adv. interval is a multiple of any allowed interval (basic Adv. interval is limited to at least 20ms - for connectable non-directional ADV_IND - or 100ms - for other ADV packet types, it also needs to be multiple of 0.625ms base timing unit) then you can easily alter adv. data by radio notification events as shown in this example.

Your case with 100ms and two adv. packet formats is pretty trivial unless you want to advertise non-connectable iBeacon message (otherwise simply store two sets of ADV and SCAN_RSP data, start infinite adv. at 50ms interval and before each session exchange the data through standard SD API so effectively you will transmit two types of packets with 100ms interval, they will just be 50ms shifted - which is desired anyway I guess).

Cheers Jan

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

FormerMember — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 12:47:08 GMT

I have updated my answer.

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

johnofleek — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 08:54:41 GMT

Many thanks What are the advantages and disadvantages for the two methods?

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

johnofleek — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 08:51:40 GMT

An application which transmits iBeacon advertising at 100ms that also transmits another generic advertisement without interfering with the regular iBeacon 100ms transmission.

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

FormerMember — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 06:34:17 GMT

If you need your device to advertise two different advertising packet you have the following options:

1) Alternate between the two advertising packets: Use a timer, app_timer for instance, to change the content of the advertising packet every given interval.

Advantage: Easy to implement: just use the regulart sd_xxx API. To alternate the advertising packet data, just call ble_advdata_set(--> sd_ble_gap_adv_data_set(..)).

Disadvantage: The device will advertise one type of the packets at the time, and alternate between the two. While one packet is advertising, it will obviously not be possible to "see" the other advertising packet.

2) Advertise the two advertising packets concurrently, one using the softdevice and the other using the timeslot API. The example experimental_ble_app_multiactivity -> hrs_advertiser (SDK11) shows how set up an advertiser with the timeslot API with the nRF51. Note: the timeslot advertiser in that example has not implemented scan response.

Advantage: The two advertising packets will be broadcasted concurrently.

Disadvantage: The example that we have is only implemented for nRF51 (it should be fairly easy to make it work for nRF52 as well), we have not implemented scan response in the timeslot API version (but maybe scan request/scan response is not needed?), it is harder to debug the timeslot API.

RE: combined iBeacon advertising and standard advertising

Roger Clark — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:07:24 GMT

Can you elaborate what you mean?

AFIK, for a device to appear as an iBeacon it just sends "manufacturer data" in a specific format.

You can change the advertising period, from the default if you want, but it will impact on the device receiving the beacon, as it may expect a transmission every 100ms.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Standard advertising device"

You could build a advertising packet that contains both manufacturer data and also a 16 bit service list etc, but its probably dependant on the receiver if it chooses to see the device as an iBeacon if it contains other data.