6lowpan over BLE on nRF51822 (Micro:bit)

[madbilly]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to use 6lowpan over BLE (that's IPSP isn't it?) on the nRF51822, specifically the Micro:Bit. What are the options for doing this?

It appears to me that the standard softdevices don't support it,  is that right? And the IoT softdevice would support it but the latest version doesn't support the nRF51 anymore and even so IPSP needs 32KB RAM? Or can it work on 16KB nRF51822 but it's not officially supported?

Are there other options that are known to run IPSP on this SoC?  Apache MyNewt or Riot.OS with NimBLE? Zephyr OS?

For context, i want to configure the Micro:bit as a native "WebThing" so it can talk to their WebThings Gateway using their standard method https://github.com/mozilla-iot/thing-url-adapter. The simplest way to do this I think to give the micro:bit an IP address which the Raspberry Pi can access and use one of their standard WebThing libraries, ideally Arduino https://github.com/mozilla-iot/webthing-arduino.

Thanks for reading and for helpful replies.

Cheers

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

I'd like to use 6lowpan over BLE (that's IPSP isn't it?) on the nRF51822, specifically the Micro:Bit. What are the options for doing this?

You will need more RAM to run IPSP using our SDK examples. Please also note that production grade S130 doesn't support IPSP (connection oriented channels), as described here:

https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.nordic.infocenter.iotsdk.v0.9.0%2Fiot_softdevice.html&cp=4_1_0_0_3

Are there other options that are known to run IPSP on this SoC?  Apache MyNewt or Riot.OS with NimBLE? Zephyr OS?

 Zephyr has a IPSP sample: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/samples/bluetooth/ipsp/README.html

However; this will not compile on nrf51-series, due to RAM restrictions. I do not know about the other OSes, but I suspect it will require more RAM, and possibly a CortexM4 to handle crypto within reasonable time.

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[madbilly]

Hello Håkon,

Argh, that's a shame, but thank you for the explanation. I had thought that because there 6lowpan can be run on Arduino with XBee (https://github.com/telecombretagne/Arduino-IPv6Stack/) that 6lowpan over BLE could be run on the Micro:bit.

But I see that that stack does not include BLE and the XBee they reference has a Cortex-M3.

Okay I'll just have to find another way to interface Micro:Bits to the WebThings Gateway and maybe try and get an nRF2 board to try IPSP with.

Cheers

[madbilly]

Hi,

Maybe the new Micro:bit based on nRF52833 will be able to support IPSP? https://tech.microbit.org/latest-revision/

But will it then be able to run an HTTP server as well?

Cheers