Dongle and gateway selection

[Mr. Ploense]

We are manufacturing 2 types of gas sensors that communicate BT LE.  One use an nRF52832 and the other an nRF51822.  Will the nRF52 dongle communicate with both of these?  Is there a gateway available that we might use to communicate with 50 - 100 BT LE devices at a time?

[Simonr]

Hi

All our products communicate using Bluetooth Low Energy, so the nRF52 Dongle will be able to communicate with any other Nordic chip. To make a network with 50-100 devices communicating with each other, I recommend taking a look at Bluetooth Mesh.

Best regards,

Simon

[Mr. Ploense]

Simon:  Please let me amplify.  We are looking for hardware.  Bluetooth Mesh is an iOS and Android app.  It also seems that the nRF51822 is not a “Mesh enabled” chip.

We will put 50 - 100 BT LE devices in a gas chamber.  We will then expose them to calibration gas.  Then, we will remove the devices, calculate gas sensitivity, write values to EPROM and replace them with new devices, etc.  Each device has a unique tag.  What we seek is a means to connect to each device and get the data once every 15 seconds during calibration.  We would like to do this on the PC that controls the calibration and dilution gases.  It seems that using a dongle that installs as a COM Port is a facile means of doing this.  We could just connect to the UART COM Port on each device with a cable but that is a lot of confusing cables in the calibration chamber and labor intensive.

My colleague tells me that BT mouse manufacturers have a means of connecting multiple devices for QA/QC.  What we wish to do is similar.

We could just use a bunch of BlueGiga BLED112 Bluetooth Smart Dongle Micro USB Adapters in 24 port USB hubs but that is a lot of hardware.  Does the nRF52 dongle install as a COM Port?  Do you have a PC dongle/interface to connect many BT LE devices to a PC?

[Simonr]

Hi

Sorry for the late reply, I have been out of office the last few days.
Yes, the dongle installs as a COM port in DFU mode, which makes it possible to program it using the nRFConnect desktop app, but most example projects at least, removes the "COM-port" functionality when programmed to make room for the program, and is only reversed by pressing the reset-button.

We do not have any interface for connecting this many BLE devices to a PC, no. Also BLE is not suited to have a network with this many devices, as the timing between advertisings will be too tight when using this many devices. I still recommend either using Bluetooth Mesh, or maybe building on the proprietary based ESB protocol which will give you more control over packet timing and frequency selection. 

Best regards,

Simon