RE: Starting a BLE project

August Stokka Holdø — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 10:48:04 GMT

Thank you very much for your answer!! I left the beacon idea, and went with the connection solution. I used the multilink central example like you advised. I changed it to transmitt the GPIO pin it receives a signal on, instead of button_action, so as to identify which sensor has been triggered, and it works. Thank you soo much for your help!

RE: Starting a BLE project

Jørgen Holmefjord — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 12:19:34 GMT

Hi,

The solution you propose with beacons and a scanning central could be used, but it will only give you one-way, unreliable communication. A central/scanner is not guaranteed to receive every advertising packet transmitted by a periheral, and the peripheral will not get any feedback if the packet was received by any devices. The central will also have to continuously scan for peripherals, giving it a high current consumption. More details about how advertising and scanning works, can be read in this blogpost.

If you have a static environment with only 2-4 peripheral devices, I would recommend going for connections. The latest S132 softdevice v4.0.2 support up to 20 connections as a central. On the peripheral side, you can implement a custom service for the sensor value, and transmitt this to the central using notifications. This will make sure the central receives every sensor value. I would recommend going through the BLE tutorials here on DevZone to learn how to implement custom services/characteristics, and learn more about BLE development in general. A multilink central example is available in our SDK, but you will have to do some modifications to support your own services.

Best regards,

Jørgen