Custom BLE app on PC using nRF51 Dongle

[Mario Amigot]

Hi! I want to program a custom BLE application (as Central/master/GATT client device) to run on a Windows PC using a nRF51 Dongle (PCA10031 board) attached through USB in order to scan, connect and exchange some data with a BLE peripheral/slave/GATT server device.

What SoftDevice should I use for the nRF51422 SoC on the PCA10031 board? And what version? In fact, what specific firmware file should I flash? What nRF5 SDK version should I use?

I've seen that I should use the pc-ble-driver libraries in order to make the PC application which serializes the nRF5 SoftDevice that is running on the nRF51 Dongle. Where can I find an example similar to the PC application I want to implement?

Thanks in advance,

Mario

[Hung Bui]

Hi Mario, 

If you have a look at the documentation you can find that you need to flash the connectivity firmware that already included the softdevice. In your case you should flash connectivity_4.1.1_1m_with_s130_2.0.1.hex file. The connectivity files can be found in this release branch: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/tree/release/4.1-compiled-connectivity

However, I wouldn't suggest to develop using nRF51 now. It's very old product and the softdevice supports it doesn't have all the new features. I would suggest to get started using a nRF52 instead. 

We have the examples here showing how you can connect to a peripheral and collect data from it: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/tree/release/4.1-compiled-connectivity/examples If you want to use python there is a wrapper library and example here: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver-py

Another option you can think of is to use the computer native Bluetooth if it's supported on the computer. I haven't got much experience but you can try 

https://github.com/hbldh/bleak and https://github.com/noble/noble

Doing this you don't need to connect a dongle to PC. 

[Mario Amigot]

Hi Hung,

The reason of using nRF51 is that we've being using the RF51 Dongle for the last years for other purposes (e.g. nRF Sniffer) and we have PCA10031 boards in stock. Plus this new application we want to develop is going to be quite simple so we don't need all the new features included within the newer nRF52 platform. As far as we can implement a basic Central device in a PC application which uses nRF51 Dongle as its Connectivity chip, we are good.

By the way, maximum ATT_MTU for nRF51 Dongle running S130 SoftDevice is 23 bytes, right?

Cheers,

Mario

[Hung Bui]

If it's the case you can continue with the nRF51. 

Correct, S130 only supports 23 bytes ATT_MTU.

[Mario Amigot]

Hi again,

Just in case we decide to migrate to RF52 Dongle in a near future:

Which Connectivity firmware hex file should be flashed? (and which SoftDevice would be used?)

Which pc-ble-driver release (tag) should we use? v4.1.2?

Thanks in advance,

Mario

[Hung Bui]

Hi Mario, 

You can just use the latest release. Currently it's the 4.1.2 : https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-ble-driver/tree/release/4.1.2/hex
If you use nRF52832 you should use the image that include S132. If you use nRF52840 you should use the image includes S140.