Connect to closest Central

[ran]

Hi, 

Let's say I have 2 nrf52 Centrals in a room , now - I'm adding a peripheral and I'd like it to connect to the central with the better RSSI ( out of the 2 ) 

My idea involves role switching and seems pretty complicated. 

Thanks, 

Ran 

[Mojo]

Any particular reason why you need this complication ?  Why not just reverse it.  2 periph instead of 2 centrals, and the centra (instead of periph)  decides which periph to connect to ? Wouldn't that be simpler ?

[ran]

Hi, 

Imagine 2 stars ( central connected to 4 peripherals ) . 

Those 2 stars can overlap. 

I'd like to add another peripheral to the 1st star. Both Central are in range, one will be further away. 

So - I need the peripheral to automatically "choose" which central should connect to him. 

This is for electricity meters monitoring in a building  

[Mojo]

I think a bluetooth mesh network would be a better choice for this.

[awneil]

Indeed - sounds like exactly the kind of thing Meshes were invented for!

and then you're not limited to there being just 2 "stars", or 2 Centrals in range, or ...

[ran]

About Mesh - Understood, I've been struggling with this for a while.

This is why I'm thinking a star will be better for this case : 

1. The requirement is that an installation of a new peripheral will be EASY. Mesh provisioning of a new device seems pretty complicated last time I've tried it.  Installation is done by Electricians. 

2. This installation can be transferred to a battery operated environment, where I will have to add powered Friend-Nodes .

3. I hope I'm wrong, but the whole BLE mesh looks like it is meant at this stage for lightning projects.

4. Learning curve for Mesh ....Boss man wants this fast :) 

[ran]

Oh...also - key consideration. 

Mesh does not support Coded PHY  ( at least officially ) - which might be needed for more rural environment. 

[awneil]

ran said:

Mesh provisioning of a new device seems pretty complicated last time I've tried it

Are you thinking of the Nordic demo?

That is, of course, just a manual demo - you wouldn't do it that way for a real project!

ran said:

Mesh does not support Coded PHY  ( at least officially )

That's true,  but your alternative is entirely proprietary anyhow - so that shouldn't be an issue.

ran said:

Boss man wants this fast

Don't they always.

The trouble is, you are basically re-inventing (a lot of) what a mesh already does for you - so, while you might come up with something that "works" in a basic case in the lab, transferring that to a fully reliable deployment in the field and covering all corner cases is a whole different ballpark ...

[ran]

Just to complete the picture - the metering data goes up to the cloud. In the installation I've described - the star central is equipped with LTE modem . ( gateway ) 

So , If I'll be using Mesh , I will have to define a gateway that all nodes "publish" to him ?

Also -  I will need to connect to each one of the nodes from a mobile phone and set\get configuration

(probably over NUS ) , will that be a problem ?

(I see that in latest mesh sdk, proxy node was remove from lightning client, available only on server ).

[awneil]

ran said:

So , If I'll be using Mesh , I will have to define a gateway that all nodes "publish" to him ?

Yes - that is a standard concept in meshes

ran said:

  I will need to connect to each one of the nodes from a mobile phone and set\get configuration

Not necessarily.

You can provision over the mesh - again, a standard concept in meshes

[ran]

" I will need to connect to each one of the nodes from a mobile phone and set\get configuration" - this is regardless of Mesh but operational , for example elec. meter S\N and initial reading .

This is per meter configuration and will have to be done using Tech, App running on iOS\Android 

[awneil]

So that's your design decision - not a requirement or restriction of using a mesh.