NFC provisioning example on Github

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Bjørn Kvaale — Thu, 24 May 2018 08:04:53 GMT

The Thingy NFC tag supports Out of Band pairing (more info here). I am unsure if this is what you mean by secure pairing. In general, it is very difficult for a device to be able to read the communication between a smartphone & an NFC tag since the NFC tag only has a certain range (up to 40 mm depending on the antenna & field strength).

If this is not what you mean by secure pairing over NFC, then no, we do not have an app that supports secure pairing over nfc.

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Vince — Wed, 23 May 2018 22:04:44 GMT

Bjorn,

Thank you for the links/explanation.

We looked into this in more detail. Is seems Nordic has shifted their position slightly over time on secure NFC pairing. The Thingy version has no features for secure pairing. It does offer a couple of cool features. On android phone, you can launch the Nordic thingy app just by NFC scan. Along with opening the app and getting an URL, you also get the mac address and a 4 byte random number. This same random is also sent over Bluetooth advertisements.

On both Android and iOS phone, you can select "connect to Thingy over NFC or Bluetooth". If you select the NFC method, you can scan the NFC tag and it will automatically initiate connection with the correct Thingy using the random code as an identifier. I think that is pretty cool. You don't need to browse through a long list of Thingy's and select the right one (which is hard, if many are advertising at the same time).

The original concept of secure pairing involved sending a secret key over NFC that was used for establishing a secure BLE connection. There are some applications that require secure pairing. Do you have an App that supports secure pairing over NFC?

Vince

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Bjørn Kvaale — Fri, 18 May 2018 10:11:06 GMT

Like I mentioned previously, the Thingy:52 together with the Thingy smartphone app provides everything you need to pair a smartphone (Android or iOS) with the Thingy:52 device. This is the best example of nfc pairing that works out of the box that we currently have available.

If you have an nrf52 development kit, you could also take a look at one of the experimental nfc pairing examples from our Nordic SDK. Like the Youtube video you posted, you should in theory be able to pair the dev kit with any smartphone that has an nfc reader. According to the documentation link, you do not need a smartphone app to pair the phone with the nrf52 dev kit.

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Vince — Thu, 17 May 2018 06:11:03 GMT

Bjorn,

Thanks. You may be referring to "pairing" as in your YouTube video https://youtu.be/B5UB_St7jAM.

But there is more info at:

https://www.slideshare.net/NFC-Forum/bt-ssp-usingnfcfornfcworldcongress2014part1final

and

https://www.slideshare.net/NFC-Forum/bluetooth-secure-simple-pairing-using-nfc-workshop-part-2

We have the firmware that is supposed be on the nRF52 for the GitHub Project. But it is not clear what app is needed on the smartphone. Do you know?

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Bjørn Kvaale — Wed, 16 May 2018 14:26:26 GMT

Is this NFC provisioning project related to WiFi? What do you mean by using NFC to provision? I have only heard of this term related to Bluetooth Mesh, not Bluetooth Low Energy. We at Nordic have not written this sample application, so I cannot provide you with the completed project unfortunately. We have two different github pages: Nordic Semi & Nordic Playground.

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Vince — Tue, 15 May 2018 14:49:01 GMT

Yes, I use the Thingy App, but the Thingy App uses for NFC for pairing only. I want to use NFC to provisions, like you show in this Github project and in the screenshot on the right. Can you provide the completed project for this NfcProvisioning App?

https://github.com/googlesamples/android-NfcProvisioning/blob/master/screenshots/1-main.png

RE: NFC provisioning example on Github

Bjørn Kvaale — Tue, 15 May 2018 07:39:25 GMT

Have you taken a look at the Nordic Thingy source code for Android? You can download the Nordic Thingy app on the Google Play Store to pair with your smartphone via NFC.