How to broadcast multiple&different types of beacon/advertisement in one Nordic 52840?

[OceanS]

Hi All, 

Is it possible for me to broadcast multiple&different type of beacons/advertisement, for example ibeacon, eddystone, unconnectable-advertisement, connectable-advertisement together in one Nordic 52840? FYI, in my use case, I don't concern about power consumption. 

Is there any way or example for this use case? Thanks

Regards

J.S.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

The SoftDevice only support once advertiser at a time, but you can update the advertising data at any time. This is done in the Eddystone Beacon Application (since Eddystone uses several different advertising packets). There is no example that combines iBeacon and Eddystone, but it should be possible to add another advertising packet "type" in the Eddystone application.

[OceanS]

Hi Einar, 

Thanks. However, if one of advertisements should be connectable, what should I do? For example, 

Step 1: Broadcast advertisement 1 (connectable ), set a timer(500ms) as well.

Step 2: (500ms time out): Stop  advertisement 1. Update the advertising data with advertisement 2 (unconnectable). Start advertisement 2).  set a timer(500ms) as well.

Step 3: (500ms time out): Stop advertisement 2. Update the advertising data with iBeacon. Start iBeacon.  Timer(500ms) as well. 

Step 4: (500ms time out): Stop iBeacon. Update the advertising data with Eddystone. Start Eddystone.  Timer(500ms) as well. 

Step 5: (500ms time out) back to Step 1. 

As you know, only the advertisement 1 is connectable and get some GATT services following if it is connected. 

My question is, 

(1) Does it mean during the whole 2 seconds, only the first 500ms is connectable?

(2) In theory 52840 with S140 should support 20 bonds. So if the advertisement 1 gets connected, could we still be able to broadcast such an advertisement 1 in its 500ms time slot? 

Thanks.

Regards

J.S. 

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

OceanS said:

(1) Does it mean during the whole 2 seconds, only the first 500ms is connectable?

Yes, that is correct. (though some Eddystone packets are also connectable, depending on configuration).

OceanS said:

(2) In theory 52840 with S140 should support 20 bonds. So if the advertisement 1 gets connected, could we still be able to broadcast such an advertisement 1 in its 500ms time slot? 

Yes. The SoftDevice will try to schedule advertising events between connection events. See Scheduling in the SoftDevice specification for details. It can have a connectable advertiser as long as the number of active connections is lower than the (configured) maximum.

[OceanS]

Thanks, Einar, 

I will update you once I get the experiments done. Thanks again.

J.S