nRF52 direct connection to Win10

[cacaomeravigliao]

Hi everyone,
I need to send data (coming from many sensors) from a nRF52 to PC via Bluetooth. I have a custom board with nRF52832 and I am using the nRF52 Development Kit (connected to PC via USB) to receive data on PC.
The service I am using is Nordic UART Service.

Now my question is:
How can I connect the custom board directly to PC and receive data via Bluetooth?

I know there are a lot of other similar questions here, but I would like to receive a more direct answer.

I have Windows 10, so there is BLE Support.

Do I need to develop a custom service on the board and a custom software for PC?

Thank you!

[cacaomeravigliao]

awneil said:

So assuming that the dongle uses the standard Windows APIs.

What if the Bluetooth is integrated in the PC? Is this problem still present?

Maybe it's better to use the BLED112 dongle...

[awneil]

If the BT is integrated in the PC I'd have thought it would be (almost) a given that it'll be using the standard Windows APIs ?

I'd have thought that a 3rd-party aftermarket add-on is at far greater risk of being "proprietary".

None of this is anything to do with Nordic.

[cacaomeravigliao]

awneil said:

If the BT is integrated in the PC I'd have thought it would be (almost) a given that it'll be using the standard Windows APIs ?

Yes, at least PC producers must guarantee that.. I hope!

Anyway I can continue to use Nordic UART Service on my custom board and develop a software for PC which reads from the dedicated characteristic of this service, right?

[tesc]

Hi,

cacaomeravigliao said:

Anyway I can continue to use Nordic UART Service on my custom board and develop a software for PC which reads from the dedicated characteristic of this service, right?

Yes, that is correct.

DevZone is primarily focused on the nRF side of things, and our PC tools such as nRF Connect does not use the Windows API. (Instead they rely on using an nRF dongle and serializing the SoftDevice.) That in turn means we have little (if any) knowledge on using the Windows API, but I am sure there are other forums out there that will be helpful.

Regards,
Terje

[Dmitry]

Hi,

if your project is something more serious than a toy or a smart wristband, I would recommend to stay on your original solution (a board connected to PC). We have spent too much time to get our device working with different Windows builds, problems with pairing, etc... Having nRF52 on both sides, you'll never fall into compatibility issues, your device will work with any Windows version (even XP), and there will be no problem to connect it, for example, to Linux or MacOS. The easiest way to exchange data is to use UART peripheral that can be routed to virtual COM port on the devkit and is visible from Windows side as a serial port (that's enough for development, for production it's better to build a board with a hardware USB-to-UART converter, as debug UART is not very stable).

Just sharing my experience...