Adding characteristic (for purpose of long read) fails

[Aurabindo]

I've added a custom service for transferring data. It shall contain one characteristic that will notify when data is available, and the other should be a long read characteristic (no notify). sd_ble_gatts_characteristic_add is failing (return 0x7) when I add the second characteristic.

I've made attr_char_value.max_len to 512. I am enabling attr_md.rd_auth = 1 to handle the long read as mentioned in the post devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

Is this the right way, or are there any new preferred way to enable long read ?

Could someone please point out what is the invalid parameter ? I'm using sdk 14.1 with GCC compiler. The code is below:

static uint32_t sensor_data_char_add(ble_ksh_t * p_ksh, ble_ksh_init_t const * p_pke_init) {
ble_gatts_char_md_t char_md;
ble_gatts_attr_md_t cccd_md;
ble_gatts_attr_t    attr_char_value;
ble_uuid_t          ble_uuid;
ble_gatts_attr_md_t attr_md;

extern uint8_t sensor_data_buffer[BLE_KSH_MAX_DATA_CHAR_LEN];

memset(&cccd_md, 0, sizeof(cccd_md));

BLE_GAP_CONN_SEC_MODE_SET_OPEN(&cccd_md.read_perm);

cccd_md.vloc = BLE_GATTS_VLOC_STACK;

memset(&char_md, 0, sizeof(char_md));

char_md.char_props.read = 1;
char_md.p_char_user_desc  = NULL;
char_md.p_char_pf         = NULL;
char_md.p_user_desc_md    = NULL;
char_md.p_cccd_md         = &cccd_md;
char_md.p_sccd_md         = NULL;

ble_uuid.type = p_ksh->uuid_type;
ble_uuid.uuid = BLE_UUID_KSH_DATA_CHARACTERISTIC;

memset(&attr_md, 0, sizeof(attr_md));

BLE_GAP_CONN_SEC_MODE_SET_OPEN(&attr_md.read_perm);

attr_md.vloc    = BLE_GATTS_VLOC_STACK;
attr_md.rd_auth = 1;
attr_md.wr_auth = 0;
attr_md.vlen    = 1;

memset(&attr_char_value, 0, sizeof(attr_char_value));

attr_char_value.p_uuid    = &ble_uuid;
attr_char_value.p_attr_md = &attr_md;
attr_char_value.init_len  = sizeof(uint8_t);
attr_char_value.init_offs = 0;
attr_char_value.max_len   = BLE_GATTS_VAR_ATTR_LEN_MAX;
attr_char_value.p_value   = &sensor_data_buffer[0];

return sd_ble_gatts_characteristic_add(p_ksh->service_handle,
                                       &char_md,
                                       &attr_char_value,
                                       &p_ksh->data_handles);

}

[Hung Bui]

Hi Aura,

There is no relation between read blob and read with authorization . Have a look here.

The reason you have error #7 is that you don't set a write permission for CCCD which is required. Try adding this:

BLE_GAP_CONN_SEC_MODE_SET_OPEN(&cccd_md.write_perm);

[Hung Bui]

Hi Aurabindo,

What do you mean by "send a long sequence of bytes" ? Do you mean that you can send different data instead of the value of the characteristic ? If it's the case, you may need read with authorization, where you can actually set the data you want to set to the characteristic and send it via read response.

sd_ble_gattc_read() can be used on the client side to do a read. Offset parameter can be used to do a read blob /read long. Meaning you need to do several sd_ble_gattc_read() and move the offset to read the whole characteristic.

Note that if you use authorization, you can think of updating the characteristic value to send different trunk of data based on the number of read instead of using offset, This is useful when you don't want to use a large buffer or if the size of your data is bigger than the max size for characteristic (512).