A Piconet with two HID peripherals

[SKR]

Hi!

I'm using nrf52832, SDK 16 and s132. I've successfully used a ble_app_hids_keyboard example to make a Bluetooth HID peripheral device to transfer sensor data to the PC. I'm using SimpleHIDWrite (https://github.com/IliumVR/SimplerHidWrite) to receive/transmit data from/to the dev board. Everything seems to work fine.

Now I want to add another sensor board to the network and I have a couple of questions. 

1. Is it possible to read from two HID devices, one after another, and combine data? Are there any PC tools available (like SHW) that can do that?
2. What changes do I need to do to the firmware for each individual board (device name, IDs...) to make this work?
3. Would it be better to make one of the boards a central and the other a peripheral to it and only connect the central to the PC? Is it possible for central to act as HID in this case? Which examples should I look at to start this?

[Hung Bui]

Hi SKR, 

I'm not very familiar with the software on PC. However, I don't see any problem having 2 peripherals (2 HID device) connect to the same PC.

Bluetooth Low Energy is designed to work as a star network. One central can have multiple peripherals connected to. You may want to check with the author of the application to see how you can handle multiple devices. 

But I'm not really sure why you would need to create Bluetooth HID device to transfer your sensor data ?

[SKR]

Ok, thank you. The reason I'm exploring BT HID device is that my previous project was using USB HID and I'm familiar with it. 

What would be the alternative to HID in this case? An individual sensor I'm using needs to transfer up to 48 bytes of data per reading.

[SKR]

According to this: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/56170/ble-central-and-peripheral-hid-ble-problem/229487#229487, a relay's peripheral side can work as HID. I'll start with "Experimental: BLE Relay Example" in the SDK.