Is it possible for central to disable scan filter?

[PeteKcSum]

Hi Nordics,

all the examples provided for searching for advertising peripherals use some sort of filter ( NAME, MAC, UUID, WHITELIST etc) . My questions is: Is it possible for a Central to disable the scan filter, and return all the devices in the surrounding environment ?

If that is possible , in theory after the "no filter" scan the adv report (should ??) have all these peripheral devices' information , which can then be accessed using ble_data_t data that contains the advertising packet as a byte array (uint8_t) and the length of the data. The reason for trying to things this way is because we are finding for alternate ways to search for the slave devices without modifying the library itself. With this adv report, we can match for devices name that have the prefix we are looking for, which would be another way to search for specific devices.

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/36981/find-short-name-in-advertising-packet-using-ble_advdata_short_name_find-getting-always-false

I understand the correct way to search for specific devices with prefix names should be done as above, but like explained, we would like to ask if other ways are possible. Your reply would definitely help clarify if such thinking is correct, thx.

[run_ar]

Hi,

I did a similar test as you, i.e. take an existing project and change it into scanning without filter. However I have not got it working yet. It might be simpler to use the Softdevice api directly, given you want to scan for everything and do not really need the functionality of the scanner module.

NRF_BLE_SCAN_EVT_NOT_FOUND behavior depends on the settings (as it might not be generated for all combinations) for the multi link example it seems this will be generated if you do not get a hit, but I did not have time to check the handler as it is currently not handled in the scan_evt_handler. As you are probably already thinking it might be possible to use this event to update the scan filter, but that needs to be tested.

[awneil]

Did you manage to get an example working without any scan filtering? 

Or are there any SDK v16 Central examples without the scanner module?

[Mojo]

use sd_ble_gap_scan_start(...) directly.   Then on BLE_GAP_EVT_ADV_REPORT use ble_advdata_search(..) to get the name.