Mesh Network Capability

[Rohan Marathe]

Dear All, Please update me if is it possible nRF52810 is having capability for SIG Mesh or Mesh Network? Also is to possible to establish Mesh network beetween nRF52810 as Master & nRF24L01 in Assert Tracking Managment. nRF24L01 is Beacon ,the beacon no. can be go upto 50 at a time. How it will communicate with nRF52810 if 50 beacon's are there with 2 Sec. data transmission of interval time. Please help me with what ever information you can share. Thanks.!

[ovrebekk]

Hi Rohan

The mesh SDK doesn't currently support the nRF52810. This is something we hope to support in the future, but we don't have a concrete plan yet for when it will be added.

It is technically possible to receive nRF24L01 packets in between mesh packets, but I wouldn't recommend it. The more time you spend listening for L01 beacons the less time you have to service the mesh, and the mesh performance will deteriorate significantly.

To get good performance I would recommend that you pair an nRF52 device with an nRF24L01(+), having the nRF52 device control the nRF24L01 over the SPI bus. Then the nRF52 device can focus on the mesh exclusively, and the nRF24L01 can receive the beacons (you could also use a second nRF52 device for this).

Having 50 beacons transmitting once every 2 seconds should not be an issue. Even with a 32 byte payload at 1Mbps on air data rate you are looking at a worst case RF occupancy of less than 1%, so the chance of packet collisions should be low. Assuming the beacons use a different RF frequency than the mesh you should also avoid crosstalk between the two.

Best regards
Torbjørn

[Rohan Marathe]

Dear sir, Thank you so much for your answer, but what will be minimum time required to communicate Beacon with master? how will it communicate as nRF52810 is having 6 channels only so communicating with 50? Also what will be the rang in both for master & Beacon?

[ovrebekk]

Hi Rohan

I am not sure I understand the question. Sending a beacon packet is happening asynchronously, so the only delay is the time it takes to send the packet (less than a millisecond).

All beacons send data using the same RF address, so there is no limit on how many devices you can receive from. You only have to make sure that if you want to receive beacons from a lot of devices they can not transmit too often, or you will get a lot of packet collisions leading to lost data.

The range varies a lot with the environment, and the hardware on the beacon and master side. Indoor range is typically 10-20m, while line of sight (outdoor) range could be 50m or more.

Best regards