Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

franck — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 08:47:04 GMT

Hi, multi-peripheral exemple was introduced in SDK 14 in july 2017 and is still listed as experimental in last SDK 16 (published 2 weeks ago). We would like to use this feature in our product as lots of our customers have requested to connect multi phone simultaneously to our bluetooth device (nrf52832 based). Is there any reason that this exemple is still experimental, are there any known limits or know bugs ?

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

nrbrook — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:53:01 GMT

Thanks for clearing this up and being very responsive!

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

Edvin — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:47:22 GMT

That is correct! Our softdevice, which all of out BLE examples are built on is production ready. So the chip supports multiple connections, so it is only the example that is marked as experimental for now.

BR,

Edvin

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

nrbrook — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:27:17 GMT

Thanks for the info. That’s great. I thought perhaps the multi-peripheral support in the soft device was experimental, but it seems you mean the example is experimental?

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

Edvin — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:22:34 GMT

The only difference is that it advertises again, as you said, and it has to keep track of the connection handles (conn_handle). You will see how it is done in the example.

There is a limit of 20 connectinos, as stated here. Note that this takes up a lot of memory, so you might not be able to maintain all 20 of them, but at least no more than 20.

New projects are marked as experimental. This means that it is a relatively new addition in the SDK. They are often set as experimental for a few SDK versions, because we tend to get some reports back (from among other you here on DevZone), which reveal bugs. It has been tested quite good already, to make it into the SDK. Note that the SDK is not something that is "production ready". It is mostly examples on how to implement things, but it is often used in production.

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

nrbrook — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 12:56:11 GMT

Great, sorry the link was incorrect, yes I probably did what you said as I was also looking at the bond management service.

That's great, so I don't need to do anything else to support multiple peripheral connections except advertise again after connection?

Also, what is the limit on the number of peripheral connections?

Why is the example marked as experimental, is this functionality not ready for production? If not, what are the known issues? When will it be?

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

Edvin — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 12:51:34 GMT

Sorry. The link that you gave is pointing to the bond management service. Probably where you started when clicking a link in infocenter. Note that infocenter does not update the link when you click links in it. To get the updated link, you must open the latest link in a new tab. That is kind of an annoying "feature" 🙂

Anyway,

The multiperipheral example is just what you say, yes. It shows how you can configure an application to support several peripheral links (connections where the device acts as a peripheral).

I assume the link you were referring to was this one: http://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.nordic.infocenter.sdk5.v14.2.0%2Fble_sdk_app_multiperipheral.html ?

So you can connect to it e.g. using on or more devices programmed with the ble_app_blinky_c application.

As you see in the multiperipheral example, that in the function on_connect(), it will start advertising again if the periph_link_count has not reached NRF_SDH_BLE_PERIPHERAL_LINK_COUNT.

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

nrbrook — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 09:05:09 GMT

Hi, I was asking about the multiperipheral example, not bond management?

RE: Multi-peripheral demo explanation?

Edvin — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 08:14:23 GMT

Hello,

The Bond Management Service examples show you how to use the Bond Management Service. You can read about the example here. The point of this service is to manage all the stored bonds on the device, and you can clear the bonds without pressing any buttons on the device.

Check out the example description in the link, and let me know if it is still unclear.

Best regards,

Edvin