RE: Can nRF51/nRF52 support 100 or more notes?

Joakim Jakobsen — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:21:27 GMT

Hi!

With standard BLE using our Softdevice, the concurrent connections is limited to 20, so that won't work for you I guess.

I think you will have to consider using a mesh solution for your project.
Using Mesh there isn't really a real upper limit of the number of nodes in your network. The theoretical max number is 32768 nodes.

1.
Yes, if you are using Mesh, there shouldn't be a problem connecting 100+ nodes. As you can see from my comment above the theoretical max number is very high, so I don't know of anyone that has done a test using that many nodes.

2.
Yes, the nRF52832 does offer double the amount of flash compared to the nRF51.
However, there are some data that needs to be stored for each new node stored on the provisioner, such as the device key, the node address if the provisioner want to re-configure a node. That is why we actually don't recommend to use the nRF52 as a provisioner, but instead the database should be stored on PC or mobile phone.

3.
In a sense, yes. The number of nodes will affect the response time, depending on the distance between them and the no_of_hops.
The latency in the mesh network would be (2ms + advertising_interval) / 2 * no_of_hops.

4.
In general I would always suggest using the nRF52-series.
Note that the Mesh SDK has deprecated nRF51, so you should really consider using nRF52 for new product development.

5.
From what I can see it looks like a good fit to use Mesh for your project.

More documentation and information below:
Blog - Introducing nRF5 SDK for Mesh
Infocenter documentation - SDK for Mesh
Blog - Things you should know about Bluetooth Mesh
Blog - Provision, Configure and control Bluetooth mesh networks with nRF Mesh

Also, there is a lot of Q&Aa regarding mesh around DevZone so you might be able to find the information you need here.
If you can't find what you need, you are welcome to post a new question here on DevZone.

Best regards,
Joakim.

RE: Can nRF51/nRF52 support 100 or more notes?

philipyeung — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 07:31:58 GMT

I see people said Mesh network can connect 100+ nodes. Is it mesh rather than star network in connecting many nodes?
devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../how-many-node-can-connect-to-a-node-in-ble-mesh-network