nRF52840 BLE/Bluetooth Mesh and Zephyr

[masak]

We are planning to develop BLE and Bluetooth Mesh products using nRF52840.
I have a couple of questions in use of Zephyr.

1) What is advantage of building BLE or Mesh on Zephyr?
2) Can we still use APIs of nRF SDK when build application on Zephyr?

Our products' functions are a sort of simple in that they aggregate data from multiple sensors and control peripheral circuits.
These tasks are rather sequential but not requiring simultaneous operations. I am wondering if there any advantages in use of Zephyr for such a product.

Thanks,

[tesc]

Hi,

1) With nRF Connect SDK (which builds on the Zephyr RTOS) you have support for everything from Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth mesh, to Zigbee, to Thread, to cellular, all in one SDK. From our side, future development of Bluetooth mesh and Bluetooth Low Energy will be as part of nRF Connect SDK. Some advantages of getting started with nRF Connect SDK are therefore that it will be easier to mix functionality previously available through different nRF5 SDK variants, you will be able to add new features to your project moving forward, and your project is generally better future proofed. For new projects, nRF Connect SDK is the recommendation.

Please note that the nRF Connect SDK stack qualification (for Bluetooth mesh) is still pending, so the timeline of your project may also play into what is the best choice for you. For more information on future plans and roadmaps, please contact our regional sales manager for your area. If you do not know who that is, please ask in a direct message or private ticket, and we will let you know.

2) While there is some overlap with the nrfx library, in general an nRF Connect SDK project is very different from an nRF5 SDK project. Given the choice, I would definitely use nRF Connect SDK from the beginning. I would not start in nRF5 SDK and then have to port the project later.

Regards,
Terje