Possible to use nRF52840 Dongle for long range beacon monitoring?

[CraigE]

I've picked up a nRF52840 DK and dongle to do some testing with long-range beacons.

So far I think I have managed to configure my DK as a beacon in long-range mode (can't see it on my BT4 phone anymore at least), but it's also not showing up on the nRFConnect PC app with the dongle. I read somewhere that the old soft device on the dongle doesn't support encoded PHY as the primary PHY?

Is there a way to update this to detect long-range beacons with the nRF connect software, or at least provide a serial output from the dongle to show detected long-range beacons?

[Simonr]

Hi Craig

The Dongle should be able to work as a long-range device but keep in mind that the Dongle antenna is not as good as the DK antenna, so you'll likely not get the range you would from two DKs. I believe you're referring to this thread, which only states that the nRFConnect app doesn't support Coded PHY. So you won't be able to scan for long-range beacons using nRFConnect, but you can use the pc-ble-driver to write your own software to scan for long-range beacons.

This case features a successful attempt of using long-range with two Dongles, and as you can see, they weren't able to achieve more than ~300 meters range (Could be possible to do more, given the environment, etc.).

Best regards,

Simon

[CraigE]

Thank you Simon, this is all very helpful!

I want to add a link to another question I asked, where Vidar Berg has created a hex file that can be used to spit out beacon packets over serial using the nRF52840 dongle. It's a very low-effort way for me to confirm things are working as expected! https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/50464/easiest-way-to-make-a-long-range-beacon-with-nrf52840/201922#201922