Using Zephyr in a qualified BT product

[Tom]

Hi there,

first off I'm impressed with the Zephyr project and with Nordic's support of it!

I'd like to understand if there are any gotchas for using Zephyr in a qualified product. The listing has generously been made available here. If we want to implement this in our product we will obviously have to build the Zephyr codebase ourselves. If we'd like to implement it using an external Host (BlueZ), do we need to do anything specific to make sure that we aren't invalidating the Controller qualification?

For example we will need to configure the Zephyr project to utilise the right pin mapping of the target device, or we may wish to reduce the number of maximum connections etc etc. How do we know when we're making changes to the codebase that are invalidating the QDID?

Thanks, Tom

[run_ar]

Most likely you will not have to re-qualify the controller. The exeption is if you modify it in such a way that you have to change the PIXIT document. This means you will have to do an assessment for every change you do to the controller implementation to see if the change affects the PIXIT.

[Tom]

As a follow up to this question, we've started speaking to some labs to help us qualify our product. The question has come up as to whether we need to qualify the RF/PHY layer. We're planning to use a module that has been qualified using Nordic's SoftDevice, but to replace the SoftDevice with the Zephyr LE Controller (and use an off-board Host). Will we need to qualify the RF/PHY layer again, considering both the hardware and controller have been qualified previously (just not together)?

Can you share what hardware was used to qualify Zephyr? If it was an OTS module then we could look into using that hardware to prevent having to qualify the RF/PHY layer.

Thanks, Tom