How to describe the capabilities of a device

[Marius Heil]

Hi,

I am wondering how I would describe the capabilities of a device. Say, I were to develop a device that contains a light bulb and a fan. I could now use two elements and bind a generic on/off server and a generic level server to both of these elements. This would allow me to control both the light bulb and the fan through a ble mesh.

But how would the application know which element (or model) is the light bulb and which one is the fan?

Is there some kind of descriptor/property/etc... that I can put either on the element or the model to specify that the first element is of type "LIGHTBULB" and the second has the type "FAN"? Because the App will somehow need to show a picture to the user for what he can turn on/off.

If not, is there some standardized way to write a device Profile/Catalogue that I could load into my app which will determine from the manufacturer code and some device identifier what each element / model can control on the device?

Thanks,

Marius

[tesc]

Hi,

There isn't really any way to put tags on models for further describing what kind of functionality is "behind" the model. The product itself is identified by the composition data fields CID (company ID), PID (vendor-assigned product identifier) and VID (vendor-assigned version identifier). With that you can identify the device, and thus know what functionalities are controlled by the elements.

It would have been useful if each model could be assigned a "product type" from a predefined list containing elements like "light", "fan", "switch", etc. Unfortunately something like that is not currently part of Bluetooth mesh. Perhaps something for the SIG to think about for the future.

Regards,
Terje

[Marius Heil]

Thanks, I have since done a lot more research and I was really astonished to see that there is no standard way to do this. I did now come up with a custom "device profile schema" that allows me to describe devices in a way that they can be imported into gateway / smartphone applications, .... Looks like there is quite a lot missing, even though the basics are more than complicated.