Ant+ and Bluetooth on the nRF52840

[AlexanderAnt]

Hi,

I would like to use the nRF52840 dongle to connect to 8 devices using Ant+ and to around 8-24 devices using Bluetooth.

• Is there a maximum number of devices of Ant+ that you can be connected using the nRF52840?
• Is there a maximum number of devices of Bluetooth that you can be connected using the nRF52840? (I suppose it is 5-8)
• Can you max out the number of connected devices using Ant+ and Bluetooth respectively at the same time?

Can I use the nRF2840 dongle out of the box as a "normal" bluetooth dongle/ ant+ dongle? I'm looking for a dongle providing Bluetooth and Ant+ at the same time.

Best and thank you for your tolerance with my rather newbie questions

Alexander

[AlexanderAnt]

Last thing to add, the transmitted data volume is very low and doesn't represent a boundery concerning the number of connected devices... (Ant+ Heart Beat Measure devices, Bluetooth 8-16 WitMotion WT901BLECL with data transmission 20HZ and 8 Heart Beat Measure devices with data transmission 1HZ).

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi Alexander. 

There is some information about this in our documentation: 
https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/struct_nrf52/struct/s340.html 

The S340 SoftDevice is a combined ANT and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol stack solution for the nRF52840 SoC, supporting concurrent operation. It is a Bluetooth 5 qualified protocol stack that offers up to 20 concurrent links in all roles.
It supports all ANT features and offers a variety of network topologies, including peer-to-peer, star, and tree. Up to 15 individual channels are available, with broadcast, acknowledged, or burst transfer communication.

ANT and BLE should work independently of each other so you should be able to "max out" the number of connected devices using both ANT and BLE. I haven't tested anything like this before, but I do assume that this would consume a lot of the available memory. 

NOTE: 
I haven't been able to verify the "20 concurrent links in all roles" statement for BLE yet, as I don't have the spec. available. Previously this has been limited to 8 connections (for SD S332), but it might have increased due to more available memory for the nRF52840.
I've requested confirmation that this statement is correct. I'll update this ticket as soon as I get that. 

Br, 
Joakim

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Can I use the nRF2840 dongle out of the box as a "normal" bluetooth dongle/ ant+ dongle?

 Yes, the nRF52840 Dongle has, as the name indicates, the nRF52840 SoC. The nRF52840 supports both BLE and ANT. 
We have a tutorial for the nRF52840 dongle that you might find helpful: 
nRF52840 Dongle Programming Tutorial

Best regards, 
Joakim

[AlexanderAnt+]

Hi Joakim,

thx for the quick replay.

I already read the tutorial, but programming the dongle is not my objective.

So I only have to make sure, that my raspberry pi (2B) recognizes the dongle, that I install the right packages to make the dongle running (apt-get install bluetooth bluez-tools blueman), and that's it!?

Best regards, I'll give an update as soon as I have tested it.

Alexander