How to connect Multiperipherals to one Central?

[vprasath]

Hi,

I want to connect Multi peripherals to one central and want to send the device name(peripheral which is connected) through the uart.

How do i get the device name which is connected?

Also i Want to know Can the central connect to more peripherals at the same time? 

[Kenneth]

Hello, nRF5 SDK v15 will be released in end of February, and then there will be a Device Information Service client that can discover for instance the device name of connected peer devices.

I believe the \examples\ble_central\ble_app_multilink_central in nRF5 SDK show how to connect to multiple peripheral devices.

[vprasath]

Thanks for the reply.

So i cannot uniquely identify the peripherals?

Is there any other way i can able to identify the peripheral by sending data or advertising data?

[Kenneth]

Not sure how you ideally want to identify peripherals, but there are many options you may consider:

- You can have content in advertisement packet that the central can use to identify the peer device

- You can have proprietary services and characteristics that uniquely identify the peer device, either during advertisement or after connection.

- You may after connection bond to the peer device, and store additional application specific information about the peer device, such that you later may re-connect automatically based on previous bond.

[rraa]

I know but static char const m_target_periph_name[] = {"Nordic_Blinky"}; connect one device. I have 5 boards and i want to connect devices same time. How can i do it?

static char const* m_target_periph_name[5] = {"Nordic_Blinky", Nordic_Blinky_1, ...};

[Kenneth]

I believe for most part \examples\ble_central\ble_app_multilink_central example in nRF5 SDK already do what you request.

[SteinarK]

I was looking for the same and my solution was (sdk_17, ble_app_multilink_central):

#define NRF_BLE_SCAN_NAME_CNT = 2  //which overrides the def in sdk_config.h

static char const *m_target_periph_name[NRF_BLE_SCAN_NAME_CNT] = {"Nordic Blinky 1", "Nordic Blinky 2"};

Then in scan_init() replace 

err_code = nrf_ble_scan_filter_set(&m_scan, SCAN_NAME_FILTER, m_target_periph_name);
APP_ERROR_CHECK(err_code);

with

for (int i=0; i< NRF_BLE_SCAN_NAME_CNT; i++){
     err_code = nrf_ble_scan_filter_set(&m_scan, SCAN_NAME_FILTER, m_target_periph_name[i]);
    APP_ERROR_CHECK(err_code);
}