Assistance in the Bluetooth SIG Qualification Process

[Thomas Nenning]

Dear Nordic Team,

The founders Lukas Pilat and Robert Kopka have met your representatives at the Light & Building conference yesterday. They recommended us to get in touch with Nordic via a private ticket to get assistance through the Bluetooth SIG Qualification process.

So far we have registered with die Bluetooth SIG, defined a project with our best knowledge, bought the PTS dongle and got familiar with the PTS Software. Currently we try to pass all test steps.

It would be great if you could give us some tips and tricks in general about the whole qualification process and how to efficiently qualify a product. Further a technical contact for detailed questions concerning the single test steps in PTS would help us a lot.

Sincerly,

  Thomas

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi!

You can take a look at this page to start with;
http://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/com.nordic.infocenter.gs/dita/gs/certifying.html

There is some useful information there, as well as links to information regarding this.

Also I would suggest that you browse through at Bluetooth SIG own website, where you can find alot of useful information.

Any questions you might have can be posted here on DevZone, and my colleagues and I will do our best to help you with your problems.

Best regards.

[Joakim Jakobsen]

I would also like to note that there are a couple of Q&A's on the DevZone open forum. So a quick search here, might reveal some information you are looking for.

[Thomas Nenning]

Hi Joakim,

Thanks for your reply. So far i have read a lot of Nordic's and Bluetooth's documents and forum posts concerning the qualification process. Still there remain some questions about how to pass the qualifaction as easily as your colleagues suggested.

A brief explanation of our product:
We use the nrf52832 with the S132 v3.0.0. softdevice. Beside the "Generic Access Profile" the "Generic Attribute Profile" and the "Device Information Service" we did not implement any standard services. We use a single costum service.

We created a Launch Studio project upon the pre-qualified Design 85568 "nRF52 with S132 v3.x.x". If we do not alter the Layer Selection and proceed to the ICS Selection there are many capabilities selected we do not support in our product like "Broadcaster, Observer or Central". This results in many tests we can not pass in PTS.

So my questions are:

1. Are only Qualified Bluetooth Experts allowed to carry out the qualification process and submit the test results?
2. Do we need to apply to become a BRTF (Bluetooth Registered Test Facility) In chapter 4.5 of "Qualification Program Reference Document" it says "BRTF are authorized to perform testing only on behalf of their own company"
3. Are we supposed to change the Layers and ICS Selection? If no, how can we qualify our product despite that in chapter 3.1 of the "Qualification Program Reference Document" a pass for all test cases is mandatory.
4. If the answer to question 3 is "Yes": We also didn't manage to fullfill all tests cases with a costum test plan so far. Mainly because consistency check forces us to test for advertisment flags (non-discoverable e.g.) which we have not implemented in our product. Hence the question if you think that the mistake is in our test plan or in the missing implementation of some flags / features
5. One solution we thought about was to create different versions of our firmware to pass single tests. But i guess this is not the intended way, correct?

Thanks a lot in advance for your support.

Best regards, Thomas

P.s.: If it is easier for you i am happy to skype or call aswell

[Thomas Nenning]

P.p.s.: I found step by step guides from other manufacturers:

https://community.cypress.com/docs/DOC-9293 (Section 2)

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/How_to_Certify_your_Bluetooth_product

Do you have a similiar guidline for the nRF52832?

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi!

I'm sorry for the delay.

It's currently easter holiday here in Norway, and we have very limited staffing.
We will be back to full staff again on Tuesday 3rd of April, and some delay in response time will be expected until then.

I've made an internal request for assistance on your case, as I don't want to make assumptions that prove not to be correct.
I'll get back to you as soon as I have some more information regarding your questions.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

As for the step-by-step guide, we don't have one like the ones you linked to. But I will make a request that something similar should be made.

Best regards