Understand Mesh in Bluetooth

[anilkunchalaece]

Hi,

I'm completely new to the Bluetooth trying to understand a thing or two.

Bluetooth 5 comes with Mesh support and NRF52 supports it with Mesh SDK.

Now my Questions are

1. whats the difference between this mesh and BLE4.0 Mesh (nrf softmesh  and ble-MESH) ?

2. are there any simulators available for bluetooth 5 from nordic or others

[tesc]

Hi,

Bluetooth Mesh is not part of Bluetooth 5. Rather, it is a separate specification (and the current version is based on Bluetooth 4.)

1. nRF51-ble-bcast-mesh, also called OpenMesh, is a predecessor to our nRF5 SDK for Mesh. That means you should use our nRF5 SDK for Mesh instead.

I have not seen this ble-mesh that you linked to before. It looks like they have a finished mesh node product, but it is hard to tell exactly what they offer from their web page.

2. I am not aware of any simulators for Bluetooth. What kind of simulator are you looking for? Perhaps there are others here that know more about this.

Regards,
Terje

[Jan]

tesc said:

Bluetooth Mesh is not part of Bluetooth 5. Rather, it is a separate specification (and the current version is based on Bluetooth 4.)

Hi Terje,

I'm new to Bluetooth Mesh and I'm going to be doing my graduate internship about it over the next 5 months. 

Could you confirm for me if the following statements are true?

1. Bluetooth Mesh was released separately from Bluetooth 5 (a lot of articles mention that Mesh is a part of BT5 hence the confusion)

2. A Bluetooth Mesh network build with Nordic Thingy's will use Bluetooth 5.

Thanks in advance!

Jan

[tesc]

Hi,

1. Yes, Bluetooth Mesh is specified through the Mesh Networking Specifications, which are separate from the Core Specifications. (Core Specification version 5.0 is what is referred to as "Bluetooth 5".)

Bluetooth Mesh builds on top of the Bluetooth Core Specification. What version of Bluetooth that you need is a bit complicated, but you can go as far back as Bluetooth 4.0 with the right Core Specification Addendum. Bluetooth Mesh doesn't use any features specific to Bluetooth 5 as of yet.

2. Because of the above (Bluetooth Mesh does not build on Bluetooth 5 features) the answer is no. The Bluetooth Mesh network does not use the Bluetooth 5 features. (Unless you either go out of spec on Bluetooth Mesh or if you run BLE concurrently.)

Regards,
Terje