Can I provisioning a Mesh network using BLE of raspberry Pi 3?

[Phan_hai_hust]

Hi everyone, i want to implement a Wifi / Bluetooth Mesh gateway using Raspberry. So, can I provisioning a Mesh network using BLE on raspberry Pi 3?

[Hung Bui]

Hi Hải, 

Yes, you can. Have a look here. But you need to connect a nRF52 to the RPi via UART/USB.

[Phan_hai_hust]

As far as I know, there are two ways: Use PyACI or use BlueZ. But see that you always recommend PyACI, so you can analyze why I should use PyACi without using the BlueZ?

[Hung Bui]

Yes, BlueZ could be an option. We are talking about 2 approaches here. First one is to use BlueZ and somehow manage to make it support Bluetooth mesh (stay in RX all the time to scan for mesh packet). I don't think this is very feasible. 

Second is to use BLE as you mentioned. Then you would need PB-GATT supported on the node to do provisioning. This is similar to what we have on the phone app. You would still need to implement Mesh stack, but the communication will be over BLE. And your device would need a proxy node to be able to communicate with mesh. 

When with the RPi + nRF52 you can do Bluetooth Mesh natively. And we have all the code that you need for that. 

[arun.kumar]

Hello Hung Bui,

When you mention RPi+nRF52, do you refer to the example where the nRF52 runs the mesh stack and a serial interface example?

Currently, I understand that the mesh serial example with 'Interactive PyACI script' offloads ECDH to take advantage of the powerful host it is connected to. But how can I run the entire mesh stack on RPi? 

[Hung Bui]

Hi Arun,

In our Interactive PyACI, only the ECDH calculation of the provisioner is offloaded to the PC. Most of the mesh stack is still running on the nRF52 side. We don't have the code for offloading all the mesh stack to the PC/RPi side. The closest we have is the minimum mesh stack on mobile app that we have, but it's not a full mesh stack. 

[arun.kumar]

Thank you for clarifying.