I am using PCA10040 with S132. I am using PCA10056 with S140. I have a Teledyne BPA Low Energy sniffer that does not support BLE 5.0. How do I know or select when I am using BLE 4.x or BLE 5 ?

[Ricco]

I am using PCA10040 with S132.

I am using PCA10056 with S140.

I have a Teledyne BPA Low Energy sniffer that does not support BLE 5.0. 

When using programs (e.g., Multilink, Blinker) how do I know (or select) when I am using BLE 4.x or BLE 5 ?

When writing my own programs, how do I know (or select) when I am using BLE 4.x or BLE 5 ?

thans

[Hung Bui]

Hi Ricco, 

BLE5 is backward compatible with BLE4.x. So for the most part there isn't any difference and your sniffer (I assume support 4.2) should be able to follow the connection. As long as you avoid new features on BLE5.0 you should be fine. They are: 

- Different PHY: 2Mbps, Coded PHY S8/S2 (only use 1Mbps)

- Avoid using Advertising extension (most phones doesn't support this) 

[Ricco]

You were wrong and I wasted $1,000.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Ricco,

I'm sorry indeed for the mistake. I didn't think of channel selection algorithm 2 (CSA2) feature in Bluetooth 5 that it's not possible to turn off with our softdevice. 

As Kenneth suggested, you can use older softdevice version (S132 v4.0 for example) on one of the peer to avoid having Bluetooth 5 features. Meaning you can make a dummy peripheral/central to test your devices. 

Another option is to use Nordic Sniffer. In our version 2.0 beta 3 we do have support for CSA2 and Bluetooth 4.2 features. You just need a nRF52 DK as the backend hardware for the sniffer.