Extended Advertising with SDK 15.1 seems not to work

[PeterLeicht]

I have tried out the Running Speed and Cadence Application of SDK 15.1 with the new DK "PCA 10056" (1.0.0, 2018.19, 683681562). We used the Samsung S8 and S9 with Android Oreo. But with the activated extended advertisement we cannot find the running application listed on the app "nrf Connect". 

Only when we set the variable init.config.ble_adv_extended_enabled to false, the we can see the running app listed, but then with the shortened advertising name: "nRF Running Sp".

The firmware uses following softdevice: s140_nrf52_6.1.0_softdevice.hex

What is the problem here? Even with Samsung Galaxy S9 with Oreo we cannot list the extended advertised name of the application.

Thanks for your answers.

[manumonti]

Hi PeterLeicht.

I have the same issue with Samsung Galaxy S8 with Android 8.0 Oreo and Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 (both of them with Bluetooth 5).

I think I know the reason of this: If I open nRF Connect app and open the menu -> Device information, the following info is shown:

Extended advertisement supported: NO. 

Maximum advertising data length: 31.

I read in some place that manufacturers can say that their smartphones is Bluetooth 5 compatible just with High speed (PHY 2M) support. It's not necessary Long Range, Periodic advertisement or Extended Advertisement support. In my opinion, this is unfair.

I'm just looking for some way to sniff extended advertisement with another PCA 10056 (some example in the SDK could be perfect). If you know how to do, i will be greatful.

Sincerely,

Manuel Montenegro

[PeterLeicht]

Thank you Manuel, this truely helps me, so I know the problem is most certainly on our mobile devices, because the Samsung S8 and S9 show that they only support High Speed from the BT 5 features.

[ntn]

Has anyone been able to test/sniff extended advertisement package? I.e. with certain phone, PC with nRF Connect, or some other special device? I used nRF Connect 2.5.0 on PC and use PCA10040 as scanner but cannot find rsca device. If I set init.config.ble_adv_extended_enabled = false; then rsca device can be scanned in nRF Connect. Maybe PCA10056 is required?

[Bjørn Kvaale]

I have tested the extended advertising on the running speed & cadence application (RSCS) from sdk 15.1 with a 52840 v1.0.0 DK. On the scanning side, I tested with nRF Connect for iOS with my iPhone 8 (which supports high speed 2 Mbps). I know for a fact that the iPhone X supports multiple features from Bluetooth 5, including extended advertising, data length extensions, high throughput mode (2 MBit/s). I believe the same is the case for the iPhone 8. The iPhone X does not support long range coded phy at the moment unfortunately.

 

It might be that both the iPhone 8 & X Bluetooth chips support extended advertising, but the API does not support it at the moment.

 

I have also tested with the 52840 dongle using the BLE app from nRF Connect for Desktop & was unable to scan for the RSCS when ble_adv_extended_enabled in advertising_init() was set true.

 

When the bool was set false, I was able to see the shortened advertising name on both nRF Connect for iOS & nRF Connect for Desktop.

 

I do not know if any Android devices have HW that supports these Bluetooth 5 features or if it is only API changes that need to be implemented to get this working.

[ntn]

Bjørn, thanks for confirming. It feels strange to me that 52840 dongle/DK board cannot scan RSCS extended advertising data. Is this a bug in 52840 dongle firmware, or is this feature not supported in SDK 15.1.0? Is there any other example I can use to flash 52840 DK board to make scanning work? My goal is to have 2 devices from Nordic utilizes Bluetooth 5 extended advertising to be able to send more than 200 bytes. Thank you.