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

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