How to apply whitelist during advertisement?

RE: How to apply advertisement whitelist during advertisement?

Robin — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 11:45:46 GMT

SDK>15 uses the ble_dvertising.c/.h to manage advertising. My fix was to implement bonding, whitelisting and advertisement functionality from the ble_app_hid_keyboard example, which uses ble_advertising. Just remember that advertising is automatically restarted when the central disconnects. In order to clear the whitelist/peers, ensure that the device is disconnected and not advertising.

RE: How to apply advertisement whitelist during advertisement?

Hung Bui — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 14:00:21 GMT

Glad that it worked Robin :)

RE: How to apply advertisement whitelist during advertisement?

Robin — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 12:59:17 GMT

Thanks. That's very helpful! I believe I've managed to implement it as intended now. The reason for my error was that the ble_advertising.h/.c automatically restarts advertising when the device disconnects. I got INVALID_STATE because the device was already advertising.

RE: How to apply advertisement whitelist during advertisement?

Hung Bui — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 09:30:50 GMT

Hi Robin,

ble_advertising_restart_without_whitelist() will not delete the peers. pm_peers_delete() does

However , you need to wait until you receive PM_EVT_PEERS_DELETE_SUCCEEDED event after you call pm_peers_delete() before continue.

Note that whitelisting is independent from peer data. So after you delete peer data, you may want to remove or update whitelist as well.
When you remove or update whitelist, you need to make sure the device is not advertising or scanning.

Please try stepping into the code of ble_advertising_start() and check which exact function that throwing the error. I'm not sure which error code is the UNKNOWN_ERROR_CODE, how did you catch that ?

RE: How to apply advertisement whitelist during advertisement?

Robin — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 13:38:08 GMT

Thanks for the help! That makes sense. I think I was confused since the advertising_init() is usually called once on startup. I thought these parameters couldn't/shouldn't be modified later.

It helped looking into the ble_app_hid_keyboard example and using the methods in ble_advertising.h to manage advertising. I am now able to use whitelisting and bonding functionality as intended.

However, I am unable to erase bonds without doing a full reset. I intend to use a button to remove bonding info and start advertising without a whitelist. In addition, I want maximum one central device to be in the whitelist. Do you have any tips on how I can remove bonds, whitelist and restart advertisements?

I see the ble_advertising_restart_without_whitelist(), however, this function does not delete the peers first, right?

After I disconnect from the bonded & whitelisted central and erasing all bonds using pm_peers_delete(), the ble_advertising_start(&m_advertising, BLE_ADV_MODE_FAST) returns INVALID_STATE. Do you have any idea why that might be?

Edit: Unknown error code was thrown by pm_device_identities_list_set() as advertisement was automatically restarted by the ble_advertising.c/.h module after BLE_GAP_EVT_DISCONNECTED. Once I ensured advertising was switched off before setting the whitelist, everything worked perfectly.

RE: How to apply advertisement whitelist during advertisement?

Hung Bui — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 14:57:48 GMT

Hi Robin,

Please correct me if I'm wrong. So what you want to do is to start advertising with no whitelist but with filter_policy = BLE_GAP_ADV_FP_FILTER_CONNREQ; ? And then you will update the whitelist after you have bonded to the central ?

If it's the case it's will cause an error as it's described in the documentation of the sd_ble_gap_adv_set_configure() function:

* @retval ::NRF_ERROR_INVALID_PARAM Invalid parameter(s) supplied:
* - Invalid advertising data configuration specified. See @ref ble_gap_adv_data_t.
* - Invalid configuration of p_adv_params. See @ref ble_gap_adv_params_t.
* - Use of whitelist requested but whitelist has not been set, * see @ref sd_ble_gap_whitelist_set.

I would suggest to advertise without the BLE_GAP_ADV_FP_FILTER_CONNREQ filter. After you have the central credential for whitelist, you can start advertising again with whitelist. You can have a look at the ble_app_hid_mouse to see an example when whitelist is used.