BLE 5 as Beacon - Smartphone Compatibility

[NK]

I'm interested in adopting nRF52840 as a mesh networking + Beacon device. It is my understanding that the Nordic SDK for mesh will only be released after Bluetooth SIG releases v1.0. If I were to consider Nordic platform for prototyping/development -

(a) When configured as a Beacon, can we expect smartphone compatibility with most current phones that don't yet have BLE 5? (i.e Can we still get current phones to see/recognize and ID the beacon)

(b) Is Nordic planning to release a prelim mesh SDK based on 0.9 intended for development purposes?

Thanks

[Roger Clark]

(a) BLE 5 is a set of new features in addition to those already in BLE 4

It does not prevent BLE 4 devices e.g. phones communicating with the nRF52840

If you compile the beacon example on the nRF52840 DK you will be able to see the beacon on your BLE 4 phone

There are some new transmission modes etc in BLE 5, which would not be compatible with your BLE 4 phone, but you would have to change the beacon example code to use them (and I'm not sure at the moment whether SDK 13 alpha even supports those new modes.

PS. I have no idea about question (b)

[David Edwin]

Adding a comment to expand the answer a bit more: You can use the nRF OpenMesh or the bluenet mesh that is built on top of the nRF OpenMesh for the capability that you are asking for. Additionally if you must do a tradeoff against long range needs and accessibility to legacy phones (as mentioned above) for the beacon or do a timeslicing between long range and 1Mbit advertising as beacon.

You should reach out to Nordicsemi directly on the one-on-one support portal aka. mypage for questions on availability.

= You may need to consider different mesh solutions based on power available at the beacon so be aware of that.