advertising manufacturing specific data without company id?

[gorazd]

Hello, we would like to release our product to the market.

Our device is a (BLE) beacon based on nrf52 which is advertising some data encoded as manufacturing specific data but with a company id of 0xFFFF which is for testing purposes as I recall from one of the Nordic’s tutorials.

Are we allowed to release our product to the market such as it is (advertising with 0xffff)? Or do we have to sign up with bluetooth SIG to allocate us a company ID? As we do not intend to market our device with bluetooth logo we would not like to pay for a licence just to get a company id.

We also tried to advertise our data with some random type which is not manufacturing specific data but we realized that iOS devices discard unknown types and its data.

Is there a way to advertise our sensor data without needing a bluetooth licence?

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi gorazd!

The company ID is a unique 16-bit value assigned to Bluetooth SIG members. And it is not allowed to broadcast a custom company ID without being a member. You can see a list of the bluetooth SIG member ID's here.

In the same link as above, all the way at the bottom, you can find the 0xFFFF company ID which states:

This value may be used in the internal and interoperability tests before a Company ID has been assigned. This value shall not be used in shipping end products.

When you are ready to release your product, you would have to apply for a Bluetooth SIG membership to get your own unique Company ID. The "Adopter level" membership is free of charge, you only need to be associated with a valid company. Read more here.

Let me know if you have any more questions.
Best regards,
Joakim

[RK]

just to be a little difficult here, for the purposes of clarification. The original poster said they have no intention of marketing the device with a bluetooth logo and I'll infer from that they have no intention of mentioning any bluetooth compatibility at all.

In that case (and I don't think that's necessarily a good plan) they are selling a 2.4GHz radio device which operates in that available band. As long as they have FCC and CE and other relevant radio tests and approvals, just because they happen to be using the bluetooth protocol, on the same channels, in the same way, I don't think they are actually subject to any of the BT SIG rules and can use any identifier they like.

I believe the requirement to register with the Bluetooth SIG and get a proper company ID is only enforceable IF you claim bluetooth features and compatibility.

As I said, I don't think it's a good plan.