How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

toshi_glamo — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 06:23:48 GMT

Hi Roshan-san,

Thank you again for your kind reply.

Now I understand what you said. You are trying to explain the way to select provisioned nodes from many devices using service UUID. I know it is not so difficult. Unprovisioned devices have the Mesh Provisioning Service, and provisioned nodes usually have the Mesh Proxy Service. This is what you are explaining, isn't it?
Again, please let me know if I have misunderstood something.

But, unfortunately, it is not what we want to do.
Probably, I wrote something ambiguous or misleading. I am sorry for my poor English or explanation.

Please let me explain what we want to do, using the use case I wrote above.
At the beginning, all devices are unprovisioned.
And, a provisioner needs to find the unprovisioned devices in the same room.

To achieve this, we want to use the URI hash carried on unprovisioned device beacon.
In this case, we assign a URI to the devices and the provisioner in the same room.
(Of course, we use different URIs for different rooms.)

I hope this clarifies what we want to do.
Please ask me anything, if you need.

Also, I found a similar Q&A in DevZone.
Identifying unprovisioned mesh device
In the Q&A, they also use URI to select a particular set of unprovisioned devices.
They use a provisioner on iOS, but the issue is very close to my question.
Please refer the Q&A, if something I wrote is unclear.

Anyway, I investigated the code you mentioned. The ScanFilter uses service UUIDs, device name, device address, and something related to the service. I am afraid I can't use this to achieve what we want to do.

It would be great if someone could tell me how I can read URI hash on unprovisioned device beacon in Android app using Android nRF Mesh Library.

Best regards,
Toshi

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 06:16:43 GMT

Hi, thanks for the detailed explanation. So I think you have misunderstood me here. You don't need to connect to a device to filter it. You can filter the unprovisioned devices based on the service the device is advertising with. Once you provision the device it will start advertising with a Mesh Proxy Service with which you can filter provisioned devices from unprovisioned devices. If you refer to our sample we use the mesh provisioning service to filter the unprovisioning service to filter the unprovisioned mesh devices and also Mesh Proxy Service to filter the provisioned mesh devices. You don't need to use the beacons here at all in my opinion. Please check here this should let you understand what's happenning. We set the Mesh Provisioning Service UUID and this filters out and returns only the unprovisioned mesh devices allowing you to connect and provision them etc.

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

toshi_glamo — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 03:50:04 GMT

Hi Roshan-san,

I investigated Mesh Profile 1.0.1, section 7.1 Mesh Provisioning Service.

Is this the right thing to study the Mesh Provisioning Service you mentioned?

Please let me know if I have misunderstood something.

Still, I am not sure if we can read URI or URI hash using the Mesh Provisioning Service.

I am afraid that the URI or URI hash is not available in the characteristics of the service.

Anyway, I think that the Mesh Provisioning Service does not help us to filter unprovisioned devices in our use case.

Let's assume that we have 20 rooms, and there are 5 unprovisioned devices and a provisioner in each room.

Each provisioner needs to find 5 devices in the same room and provision them.

If a provisioner need to use the Mesh Provisioning Service to find the 5 devices, it needs to connect to GATT servers on many devices.

It is a waste of time and resources, isn't it?

This is why we need to use URI hash to filter the unprovisioned devices.

The URI hash is carried on a unprovisioned device beacon.

So, if we assign the same URI to the devices and the provisioner in the same room,

the provisioner can determine which devices to provision when it receives unprovisioned device beacons.

The provisioner does not need to make any unnecessary connections to the devices which have different URIs.

I would appreciate any advice.

How can I read URI hash on unprovisioned device beacon in Android app using Android nRF Mesh Library?

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

toshi_glamo — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 00:53:37 GMT

Thank you for the advice. I will learn about the Mesh Provisioning Service.

Here is the screen shot of unprovisioned device beacon captured with nRF Sniffer, just in case you need it.

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

Roshan Rajaratnam — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 11:32:51 GMT

I would recommend using the Mesh Provisioning Service to filter the device because this is the simplest approach as the scanner will handle the filtering for you and this is how we have implemented the sample app as well. I will have to take a look at the UnprovisionedBeacon but i am busy with some other tasks right now.

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

toshi_glamo — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 09:43:02 GMT

Hi Roshan-san,

Thank you so much for the reply!

I have already checked updateScannerLiveData(), but I could not get the URI hash because the beaconData is null.

I added the Log.d output to the method like below:

    private void updateScannerLiveData(final ScanResult result) {
        Log.d("glamo-log", "ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- start!");
        Log.d("glamo-log", "result is " + result.toString());
        final ScanRecord scanRecord = result.getScanRecord();
        if (scanRecord != null) {
            Log.d("glamo-log", "scanRecord is " + scanRecord.toString());
            if (scanRecord.getBytes() != null) {
                Log.d("glamo-log", "scanRecord.getBytes() is " + scanRecord.getBytes().toString());
                final byte[] beaconData = mMeshManagerApi.getMeshBeaconData(scanRecord.getBytes());
                if (beaconData != null) {
                    Log.d("glamo-log", "ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- with beacon data!");
                    Log.d("glamo-log", "beaconData is " + beaconData.toString());
                    mScannerLiveData.deviceDiscovered(result, mMeshManagerApi.getMeshBeacon(beaconData));
                } else {
                    Log.d("glamo-log", "ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- without beacon data!");
                    mScannerLiveData.deviceDiscovered(result);
                }
                Log.d("glamo-log", "ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- device found!");
                mScannerStateLiveData.deviceFound();
            }
        }
        Log.d("glamo-log", "ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- leave!");
    }

And I got the output like this:

... D/glamo-log: ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- start!

... D/glamo-log: result is ScanResult{device=C6:32:88:E4:FB:CB, scanRecord=ScanRecord [advertiseFlags=6, serviceUuids=[00001827-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb], manufacturerSpecificData=null, serviceData={00001827-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb=[-10, -113, -68, 115, -13, 106, 72, -118, -117, -5, -28, -120, 50, -58, 85, 126, 0, 0]}, txPowerLevel=-2147483648, deviceName=nRF5x Mesh Switch], rssi=-51, timestampNanos=27762065700561, eventType=17, primaryPhy=1, secondaryPhy=0, advertisingSid=255, txPower=127, periodicAdvertisingInterval=0}

... D/glamo-log: scanRecord is ScanRecord [advertiseFlags=6, serviceUuids=[00001827-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb], manufacturerSpecificData=null, serviceData={00001827-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb=[-10, -113, -68, 115, -13, 106, 72, -118, -117, -5, -28, -120, 50, -58, 85, 126, 0, 0]}, txPowerLevel=-2147483648, deviceName=nRF5x Mesh Switch]

... D/glamo-log: scanRecord.getBytes() is [B@ea1bea5

... D/glamo-log: ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- without beacon data!

... D/glamo-log: ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- device found!

... D/glamo-log: ScannerRepository.updateScannerLiveData() -- leave!

Anyway, I didn't know that the Mesh Provisioning Service can be used to filter unprovisioned devices.

I will study about it, and report the result here.

But, it would be great if you could give me more information like the API to filter unprovisioned devices.

Thanks.

RE: How to read URI hash on Un-provisioned Device Beacon with Android app

Roshan Rajaratnam — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 08:21:04 GMT

Hi, check here line number 168 will return a beacon if it's advertised and returns an UnprovisionedBeacon. However is there a reason for not using the Mesh Provisioning Service to filter unprovisioned devices?