smart beacon reference design nrf51822 sw combination

RE: smart beacon reference design nrf51822 sw combination

bluehub — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 18:51:28 GMT

Thank you. I have made both applications run.

RE: smart beacon reference design nrf51822 sw combination

Vebjørn — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 16:16:04 GMT

Your second application sounds very much like a beacon, and you don't have to change anything with the beacon kit to achieve this functionality. Simply plugging in a battery will make it advertise, making it discoverable by other devices.

For your first application however, which will be a central device, you will need a different softdevice. The beacon kit comes with s110, so you will need an external debugger to flash the beacon kit with a new softdevice. Softdevice s110 is for a peripheral, while s120 and s130 can be used a central. It would be easier to create your first application on the new nRF51 DK, because you wouldnt need an additional debugger, and it would be much easier to connect it to your server (soldering on the beacon works, but you have limited pins, and they are very small)

A good starting point for the "scanner" application would be the multilink central project, which scans for devices and can also connect to them. Adding UART to this project wouldn't be too difficult, so the device can scan for devices, then report back to your server via UART.

Depending on what chip you are programming for, and what SDK you are using, you can find the corresponding softdevice using the following compatibility matrix

RE: smart beacon reference design nrf51822 sw combination

bluehub — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 15:11:21 GMT

I need two applications. The first one will be used for detecting nrf51822 based bluetooth devices around and sent detected devices' id to a server over a communication media (eg. UART, GPRS etc. ). the second one will be used for advertising itself to be detected. In other words my applications wiil be two sides of bluetooth based locationing.

I know I have to costumize application to support GPRS or communicating via UART with AT commands etc.

I have costumized "nRF51822_Dev_Kit\Software\nrf51_sdk_v6_1_0_b2ec2e6\nrf51822\Board\nrf6310\s110\ble_app_beacon" per softdevice V7 migration pdf. Then I ran the software. After debugging I realized application does not execute the main loop (power_manage() routing) after initialization. Possibly it waits somewhere in softdevice code. I searced the ble devices using my PC but nrf51822 device is not found.

So, is this a good starting point? Are there working applications (possibly with softdevice V7)close to my case I explained above?

RE: smart beacon reference design nrf51822 sw combination

Vebjørn — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:06:45 GMT

Are you planning on using it as a normal beacon, or do you want to flash it with a custom application?