RE: Avoid updating attribute value on Indications/Notifications

Edvin — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 14:34:39 GMT

I am not quite sure I understand your question, but let me give it a go.

Notifications vs indications is almost the same. The difference is the layer in which the payload is ACKed. Notifications are ACKedin the link layer (in the softdevice), while indications are ACKed in the application layer. If you are not interrested in updating the value at all, I would suggest you use notifications, as these are much more efficient.

That being said, the value of a characteristic is updated whether you like it or not *. If it only supports notification, and not read, then strictly speaking, there is no value to update. It will just push the value to the device that has enabled notifications, sort of like a pipe.

*If you use write with permission, then you will send a write request, which you can reject or accept, but if you do this to save time, then it is lost, because it generates a lot more messages back and forth, which takes a lot more time than actually updating the value.

So why are you asking this? Do you see that the throughput is not high enough? Do you want to save power? Or do you simply "not need to store the value"?

Best regards,

Edvin