ESB Number of Pipes

[Aaron]

Hello Nordic Community, this is my first post, although I've been using the forums extensively for development.

I've been working with ESB on the nrf52832. The protocol provides easy access to a whole host of features that are attractive for my application (a set of wireless scales), like auto ACK, ACK with payload for sending commands and auto retry transmission. It was also easy to setup and get working without having to delve into the radio settings. Initially the limit of 8 pipes wasn't an issue as I only needed 4 scales. However I have another application which will require up to 64 pipes. On the nrf52832 is the limit of 8 pipes a physical hardware limitation, fixed on the radio peripheral, or just something to comply with legacy products?  Can I change the limit in the ESB driver by just increasing the number of pipes, size of the base address array etc? Is there any disadvantage to doing this?

Thanks

Aaron

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

It's a hardware restriction that limits nrf_esb to 8 pipes.

What you can do is to add extended address into your data payload. The drawback of doing this is that you need to control the radio in software, disable ACKing in the library, and manually do this in your application.

 

Kind regards,

Håkon