RE: Hardware needed to use nRF on desktop

Karl Ylvisaker — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:54:23 GMT

Hello,

1. Yes, there is. As already mentioned by Nguyen you will need to configure your ESP32 to act as a central that scans for BLE devices, and that connects(or picks up advertisements) from your nRF Device. A brief search on public repositories on GitHub yields multiple results that you could take a look at where people have already used the ESP32 as a scanning central device.

2. If you are referring to the nRF Connect desktop application, it is made to automatically be used with all the series 51, 52 and 53 Development kits and dongles. If you are intending to create a central device that collects some sensor values before processing/moving them elsewhere, you will have to create the firmware for that central yourself - but there are plenty of examples available to have a look at, regarding how this could be done. I personally am not familiar with using the ESP32 for this, but I would recommend looking at github for inspiration regarding this.

If this does not answer your questions or if things are still unclear, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Best regards,
Karl

RE: Hardware needed to use nRF on desktop

Nguyen Hoan Hoang — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 05:23:35 GMT

1) You need to program the ESP32 in Central mode to scan and connect to BLE devices

2) You can use a nRFConnect Desktop with a compatible dongle such as the one from this project https://www.crowdsupply.com/i-syst/blyst840