Why is there no advertisment for a beacon with services?

[macphyter]

I'm creating a custom beacon, similar to iBeacon, but with a custom data format. It advertises only once every 8 seconds, but the iPhone app doesn't receive advertisements when the app is in the background. In order to get around this, I've added a service to the advertisement data (BLE_UUID_DEVICE_INFORMATION_SERVICE) but now the device won't advertise at all. When I remove the service UUID from the advertisement data, then the device will advertise again. Am I violating some sort of spec? I can't tell what's going on inside the soft device, why won't it advertise?

[Ulrich Myhre]

Could you post the advertising data you are trying to set, and the return code of the adv_data_set() and adv_start() calls? It sounds like the advertising data is formatted incorrectly, and the return codes should give an indication of what is wrong.

[macphyter]

Here is the advertising data I'm setting in advertising_init:

uint8_t       flags = BLE_GAP_ADV_FLAGS_LE_ONLY_GENERAL_DISC_MODE;

ble_uuid_t adv_uuids[] =
{
    {BLE_UUID_DEVICE_INFORMATION_SERVICE,        BLE_UUID_TYPE_BLE}
};

ble_advdata_manuf_data_t manuf_specific_data;
manuf_specific_data.company_identifier = APP_COMPANY_IDENTIFIER;
manuf_specific_data.data.p_data = (uint8_t *) m_beacon_info;
manuf_specific_data.data.size   = APP_BEACON_INFO_LENGTH;

// Build and set advertising data.
memset(&advdata, 0, sizeof(advdata));
advdata.name_type             = BLE_ADVDATA_NO_NAME;
advdata.include_appearance    = true;
advdata.flags.size            = sizeof (flags);
advdata.flags.p_data          = &flags;
advdata.p_manuf_specific_data = &manuf_specific_data;
advdata.uuids_complete.uuid_cnt = sizeof(adv_uuids) / sizeof(adv_uuids[0]);
advdata.uuids_complete.p_uuids  = adv_uuids;

err_code = ble_advdata_set(&advdata, NULL);
APP_ERROR_CHECK(err_code);

When I enter a debug session and set a breakpoint at the end, it tells me err_code is "not in scope". How can I view the return value of ble_advdata_set()? Thanks for your help.

[John]

The Keil IDE doesn't play nice with displaying local variables. Sometimes I find it will display if I hover the mouse pointer over the variable. The sure fire way is to make the variable a global and then you can put it in a watch window and see what it's value is when you hit your breakpoint.

[macphyter]

So I made err_code into a global, and the return value I'm getting is 0x00... however, the APP_ERROR_CHECK(err_code) is causing a reset. It's acting like I'm corrupting memory somehow, but my code is posted below, I don't see how. Can someone explain how the APP_ERROR_CHECK macro works?

[Ulrich Myhre]

The default behavior of APP_ERROR_CHECK is to reset the device, so this is expected. It seems like the adv_data_set() function do not like your parameters then, either because they are invalid or because they are larger than what you can fit in the advertisement. I do not know the SDK well enough to know exactly how the mechanism works, so hopefully someone else can answer you on this.