BLE mesh self provisioning or factory preconfigured

[Vladimir Aparin]

Hi,

we want to made the device which should working in the mesh network without provisiong procedure by user.

Typical application - network with 500 nodes, every node placed in disabled mode (no power provided), we power them all simultaneously (turn a power line switch on).
Network should made self provisioning and start to work without any customer intervention (it's additional operation, which we want to avoid).

As we know, during provisioning procedure a device gets added to the network and is assigned unicast addresses, a network key, and a device key.
We want to factory programming network name, network key, device key. Only one question here - how to set the unicast address to device in automatic mode?

Can we make the device (write software), which will set address to any device that it'll see with correct panid & keys?
Or can we set the device address on factory?

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi.

I would not recommend using factory hardcoded device/network key like that.
When using a hardcoded network key, it increases the risk that someone may hack that master key and being able to access any of the company's networks.
If you do go for a hardcoded network and device key, it is hard for the unicast address.
Without knowing which product is going to which application/customer, how would they assign the address?

You could still be able to acheive "No customer intervention" when using our provisioner.
The provisioner could run in the background to assign network keys/address.

I suggest that you take a look at the Remote provisioning example in our nRF5 SDK for Mesh.

Best regards,
Joakim