whitelisting in NRF52480 Dongle using pc-ble-driver-py

[Vishal97]

I am using NRF52840 Dongle to scan all the BLE advertisement packets.

I wish to scan for the BLE advertisements packets only from a particular device using the whitelisting feature.

Kindly suggest and provide a sample code snippet on how to do the whitelisting configuration using pc_ble_driver_py python library.

[haakonsh]

Hey Vishal, 
Sorry for the late reply, we're a bit short-staffed during the summer vacations.

I believe you need to call connect() with a scan_params where you've defined a pointer to the whitelist structure. 

I believe this is the structure from ble_gap.h in https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver:

/**@brief GAP scanning parameters. */
typedef struct
{
uint8_t active : 1;                          /**< If 1, perform active scanning (scan requests). */
uint8_t selective : 1;                     /**< If 1, ignore unknown devices (non whitelisted). */
ble_gap_whitelist_t * p_whitelist; /**< Pointer to whitelist, NULL if no whitelist or the current active whitelist is to be used. */
uint16_t interval;                          /**< Scan interval between 0x0004 and 0x4000 in 0.625ms units (2.5ms to 10.24s). */
uint16_t window;                         /**< Scan window between 0x0004 and 0x4000 in 0.625ms units (2.5ms to 10.24s). */
uint16_t timeout;                          /**< Scan timeout between 0x0001 and 0xFFFF in seconds, 0x0000 disables timeout. */
} ble_gap_scan_params_t;

/**@brief Whitelist structure. */
typedef struct
{
ble_gap_addr_t **pp_addrs; /**< Pointer to an array of device address pointers, pointing to addresses to be used in whitelist. NULL if none are given. */
uint8_t addr_count;               /**< Count of device addresses in array, up to @ref BLE_GAP_WHITELIST_ADDR_MAX_COUNT. */
ble_gap_irk_t **pp_irks;        /**< Pointer to an array of Identity Resolving Key (IRK) pointers, each pointing to an IRK in the whitelist. NULL if none are    given. */
uint8_t irk_count;                  /**< Count of IRKs in array, up to @ref BLE_GAP_WHITELIST_IRK_MAX_COUNT. */
} ble_gap_whitelist_t;

You need to create a ble_gap_whitelist_t structure and add it to the scan_params object before you call connect().

I'm going on vacation for a week myself, but I'll assign your case to another Tech Supporter.

BR,

Håkon Holdhus

[Vishal97]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Kindly suggest how the same should be done in python as I am using the pc-ble-driver-py the python binding of the native library you have mentioned.

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

The whitelist feature is usually used with bonded devices because identity resolving key (IRK) will only be exchanged during a bond procedure. The IRK is needed to do whitelist scanning if the peripheral uses a private address type.

We don't have an example that demonstrates bonding or whitelisting with the pc_ble_driver so it is not very trivial to set up. I would recommend you to do the filtering in your application instead.