RE: Bluetooth mesh on nRF52840 SDK vs Zephyr

kratenko — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:33:36 GMT

Hi Hung, thanks for the elaborate answers. This should be sufficient for an evaluation I think. Cheers.

RE: Bluetooth mesh on nRF52840 SDK vs Zephyr

Hung Bui — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:14:48 GMT

Hi Kratenko,

I will need to check with the mesh team to get a confirmation regarding long range with mesh on NCS. But as you already mentioned, it's not covered in the mesh spec. So this feature will not on the top of our priority and will not have any official support unless there is a change in the spec.

Regarding your question:

Does Zephyr use the Softdevices for the nRF52480 in any way? Are there plans to do so in the future? No, Zephyr doesn't use softdevice. Zephyr has its own host stack and its own controller stack. In our NCS SDK (which partly uses Zephyr but it's not the same as Zephyr) we provide in addition a Nordic's controller which based on the softdevice. But it's only the controller stack.
If I start a new BT-Mesh project, should I go with the well tested mesh-SDK (which seems end-of-life) or with the coming thing Zephyr (which seems not production ready, yet). Is there any recommendation by Nordic?
I would suggest you discuss this with our RSM for Germany to find the best solution for you. Please let me know if you don't have the contact. Our generic advise currently is that if you are fine with what available now in nRF Mesh SDK and would go to production phase fairly soon you should go for NRF5 SDK. If you are only evaluating and may need advanced feature that new Bluetooth Mesh spec may have then you should get started with NCS Mesh.
Does Zephyr support BT-Longrange (Coded Phy). Yes, at least for BLE. I don't have the confirmation for LongRange with Mesh ( and don't think there will be, as it's out of spec)
Is it realistic to try and build BT-Mesh using Coded Phy in Zephyr (I know that is outside of the Mesh spec. I also know that it has been done with the SDK)
I believe it's possible but I can't confirm.
Is it possible to use the Mesh-SDK without Segger-IDE (all howtos start with "install segger ide")
Yes, you can compile using ninja in command line. Have a look here.

It's pretty early for Mesh and even Bluetooth on Zephyr/NCS but we are doing certification and in a short future time frame (6 months) there will be official support and certification for Bluetooth and probably Bluetooth Mesh as well.