Using Bluetooth to setup Wi-Fi connected device

[jablackann]

My company has been working on making some devices that utilize Wi-Fi to be able to connect a device to the internet to view status and allow a device to be remotely controlled.  One stumbling block that we have come up against is that on the app side (iOS and Andriod), the way our application has been developed it requires our device to work as an access point mode and then requires the user to jump out of our application, into their phone settings and then make different Wi-Fi setting changes.  What we have seen from various other products (in their setup process), is that devices seem to use some form of Bluetooth connection to share credentials that makes the user’s experience much more simple.  (The user doesn’t have to leave the app and then switch to the device in access point mode and insert credentials.)  We don’t know if there is a specific term for this type of setting up Wi-Fi functionality utilizing an existing side channel Bluetooth connection. 

 As an example of a use case, if you have an Amazon Echo (or Alexa) and are trying to set it up to get it working on the internet, your phone will direct you to make sure Bluetooth is on when performing the setup.  We experimented with getting several other devices on to Wi-Fi and found that most of the time the phone asks that Bluetooth be enabled to perform the setup. 

Our existing Wi-Fi devices only have a ATWINC module for making the Wi-Fi connectivity.   We are unsure what the requirement would be to allow us to use an additional Bluetooth interface to ease the Wi-Fi connection issues.  If anyone knows of any information that can be shared for helping us figure out how we can utilize Bluetooth for performing the Wi-Fi setup, we would be extremely appreciative.

Thanks.

[Johannes]

Very complex question. I have a device which is primarily run by a nrf52840 and uses an ESP8266 as a WiFi 'modem'. I transmit the Wifi credentials to the nordic chip via bluetooth which then in turn instructs the ESP.

but in your case if the product is primarily wifi based, adding a whole new bluetooth SoC may be overkill.

There are many ways to configure the wifi of IoT devices but almost all of them have some flaw or another.

You may want to consider switching to a different Wifi module which has also bluetooth support, for example ESP32.

[Susheel Nuguru]

I think this is exactly one of the use cases we intend (disclosure: no promises made) to cover with combo Wifi/BLE SoC in the future. I have not done total research yet, but it looks like provisioning/commissioning through BLE seems to give a fast and easy user experience. 

[jablackann]

Thanks for the suggestions.  At this point, we would really not want to step back and redesign the entire product to use a new WiFi/Bluetooth combo device.  I certainly understand that but we are hoping that could come in a cost reduction design down the road.

I did some searching and found this article.

How to use Bluetooth Low-Energy for Wi-Fi commissioning from Silicon Labs.  We will try to see if we can get some type of solution working similar to this.

I was just curious if anyone has experience implementing a solution similar to this using Nordic hardware/software.

Thanks.