Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Hung Bui — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 11:08:23 GMT

As you may already notice, yesterday Bluetooth Sig has released the Bluetooth Mesh specification v1.0

We also released the Mesh SDK v0.9.1 today. Please have a look here.

Let's hope with Bluetooth Mesh, we will be able to really solve the connectivity problem with home automation and more.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 10:14:33 GMT

I do agree that 2.4GHz has potential to be good "local" low power networking medium and technologies on top of it are promising. That's why I'm interested into experience of other people in the industry. However so far I haven't seen really usable solution (I do hate this approach when someone does it to my delivery = judging by the worst case experience - but let's be honest it has a point) and no, anything more then few seconds of reliable data transports over 3 hops isn't acceptable for most of indoor applications (at least in my business;)

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 07:35:29 GMT

Funny in the symposium I participated the BT people made it sound like BLE is the super communication apparatus free from all the interference especially wifi, with all the frequency hopping etc.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 07:35:23 GMT

@ endnode

So I take it you didn't really look into that github project I mentioned... doesn't matter.

Anyway, latency? At this point I don't really care because like you said I'm using it for the water meter kind of application... so yea, 2 hours maybe a problem, or even 10 minutes, but 5? Not really at this point, I don't know if things will move toward the demanding direction.

So far I got a 10 nodes network working in a "clean" environment, meaning little wifi and other stuff and the latency is acceptable (<30s usually, my methods are quite primitive), I'm migrating it to another platform right after I can propagate short messages through out the network. Because of the hasty migration, I don't have time to do a more in-depth gathering of all specs.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 09:23:37 GMT

So my question is opposite: have you achieved good latency in real environment (!= 3 dev kits on your lab test bench!) with any of these mesh technologies? If yes I would very eagerly learn the details!

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 09:22:19 GMT

This would be for week-long work shop and not discussion over the forum, but we have evaluated like one year ago 5-10 low-power mesh network solutions, closed source/open source, BLE based/2.4GHz proprietary/sub-GHz and once you bring it to office floor full of people, machines, WiFi and other noise suddenly nothing was usable for our purpose. Yes, if you have Wirepas network in urban area and you want to read water meter state once a day (so you don't care if you get the value now or in 5 minutes or in 2 hours) then it's OK. If you want to get information (hundreds of bytes) over several hops reliably within seconds not minutes nothing worked for us. I hope these solutions are evolving so it will get better but things we have tried were under heavy development for 3+ years so I don't expect magic happening since then.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 09:09:01 GMT

@endnode

sending a pigeon would be faster and more reliable

What? Have you tried these?

github.com/.../nRF51-ble-bcast-mesh

What do you think about it?

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Daniel Wang — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 19:10:08 GMT

I have been in contact with Bluetooth SIG this week, and been told it will be released this month(July).

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 05:47:35 GMT

Well there are people working on it for 3+ years as their core business and still these networks are barely usable for anything else then sending few bytes per day and having agility in the network in the range of dozens of seconds up to dozens of minutes. I've evaluated things like Wirepas PINO, CSR mesh, Nordic experimental BLE mesh and few more, none of them hold in larger scale and real environment (2.4GHz noise), packets were traveling minutes. So yes, it transports the data but I have completely different performance requirements so I wouldn't even call it "network" (sending a pigeon would be faster and more reliable). More people researching the better but let's not pretend that this problem was waiting for some big corp R&D guru who would suddenly make it working (also outside the lab and not only on his desk with 4 dev kits).

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 01:42:11 GMT

don't look at me if you believe in mash network magic;)

Hello @endnode according to my intel, all the big players, Sony, Samsung, Apple etc. are working on it... I do not suppose they are just going to waste all those hard earned corporate dough, are they?

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 10:51:16 GMT

(I would simply be down to Earth with "mesh networking" buzz word as I haven't seen any of them working reliably in practice yet. Messing it with main standard would probably lead to more disappointments and harming BT brand, that's how I read it. But I'm pessimist, don't look at me if you believe in mash network magic;)

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 10:44:48 GMT

@Hung Bui I think I understand what you mean, but emotionally I find it very difficult to accept. So... basically we are looking at a Mesh protocol/stack that happens to share a lot of common traits with BT, instead of a BT protocol/stack that has Mesh as one of its features?

What does this imply on the softdevices? Do I have to mount a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT softdevice if I want to use BLE Mesh, at the cost of a lot of BLE legacy features being unavailable? And by that I mean for example, there won't be S132M SD which is S123+Mesh, but rather, S500, which doesn't really share much with S110, or S140, or any previous SDs?

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Hung Bui — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 13:34:39 GMT

No, Bluetooth Mesh is not part of Bluetooth 5.0.

I'm not sure from where and what you have heard, but except for advertising and scanning based on BLE in Bluetooth 4.0, all layers on top of that in Bluetooth Mesh is completely new. I wouldn't say Bluetooth Mesh is BLE. It's a totally new protocol.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 08:25:23 GMT

@Hung Bui hello, your answer is too diplomatic-ish, too vague, what do you mean by that, are you saying that Mesh won't be a part of the BT 5 at all? Or are you saying that there is a separate, independent version of BLE specs specifically for mesh?

This is completely different from what I've heard????

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Hung Bui — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 10:40:30 GMT

I'm sorry that we can't give you any information about release dates from Bluetooth Sig. But one thing need to be clear out, Bluetooth MESH and Bluetooth 5.0 are not related. Bluetooth 5.0 new features are not utilized in the Bluetooth MESH spec at least on this version which base barely on Bluetooth 4.2.

So if you are looking for long range Bluetooth Mesh, you may get disappointed.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Rick — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:08:58 GMT

At the Nordic Tech Tour seminar I attended they mentioned a rumor of Bluetooth SIG announcing Bluetooth Mesh in July. Nordic works closely with the Bluetooth SIG and they develop their softdevice in parallel with their work for the Bluetooth SIG, so you can expect it a few days after the announcement. Note that this is only a rumor, so I don't know how much of it holds up.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 09:36:10 GMT

Well then I will sit and wait for that massive breakthrough;)

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 09:34:07 GMT

I'm afraid it's company secret, I don't wanna get in trouble lol.

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 09:11:44 GMT

It seems it was HUGE in November 2016;)))

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 09:09:26 GMT

Tell me more!

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

Mitch996 — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 08:58:00 GMT

I don't see any indications they would be close to the release... am I missing something?

Wanna make a bet ? ;)

RE: Does any softdevice support Mesh, per BLE5?

endnode — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 08:45:50 GMT

Aren't you still mixing major spec release (which is basically buzzword) and particular features/mendments (profile specifications)? If there will be any update to BT SIG specification it will be 5.1, 5.2 etc. If chip supports "BT5" or not is almost useless as most of the features are optional anyway (as they were in 4.2/4.1). And while BT SIG are working on "mesh networking" adoption into the standard (or separate amendment) I don't see any indications they would be close to the release... am I missing something? As I follow Nordic they won't release anything before BT SIG official announcement but maybe you get lucky, let's see;)