Automating writing to a custom BLE characteristic using Windows PC

[eric.bouchard]

I am trying to find the optimal way to automate some tests that I run on my BLE device. In this test, I need to write a specific hex value to a custom BLE characteristic of my device. I have this working manually in two different ways:

1. Connected my BLE device to an Android phone using the nRFConnect app. Once connected, manually write to that custom characteristic using the app.
2. Connected my BLE device to my Windows PC using the nRF52840 dongle, then using the nRFConnect windows app in a similar way to the phone app to write to that custom characteristic manually.

I was hoping that, with my BLE device connected to the PC, the nRFConnect software would allow some simple mechanism for being able to accomplish the same thing through a script, API, or command line options, but that doesn't seem to be the case?

What is my best option here to move away from having to manually initiate these tests?

Thanks!

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

nRF Connect cannot be scripted easily, so if you want to use the nRF52840 dongle, the pc-ble-driver (with it's Python or JavaScript wrappers) is probably the most relevant. However, this can be a bit cumbersome to use, as all it does is give you the SoftDevice API on the PC side.

If you just want control a generic BLE device via a script language, then it is perhaps better to use the native BLE device on your PC together with something like bluepy (Python) or noble (Node.js).