RE: BLE mesh flash manager

D Yuen — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 05:40:42 GMT

Hi Terje,

Noted and thank for your suggestions.

Best Regards,

D.Yuen

RE: BLE mesh flash manager

tesc — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 13:02:18 GMT

Hi,

a. No, there is no information about how many servers there are in the group. The closest you would get to knowing the number would be at the provisioner, although there will not be perfect information there, for several reasons:

Some nodes might not be part of the network, either because they are powered off, out of network reach, or because they have left the network entirely.
If there are multiple provisioners on the network, you would need updated information from all of them.
It is possible to configure nodes not only from a provisioner, but from any other node (as long as that other node has the device ID of the device being configured.)

b. While this can be done, it may or may not be a good idea, depending on the use case. If for instance you have a Bluetooth mesh network that is set up and controlled from a single smartphone app on a single smartphone, then it can work. If you intend your product to work on a common network with other Bluetooth mesh devices, then it may work badly or not work at all. Also, keep in mind the aspects from my answer to a.

In general, your approach of "turning off the device" when it does not need to send anything, is exactly what Low Power Node does. In addition to getting turned off, it also has a Friend Node which stores incoming messages for it. Storing incoming messages can be important, or else the node may miss some of the events happening on the network. In general it is much better to work within the features specified in Bluetooth mesh, than to try to do anything non-standard. You risk breaking the qualification and/or getting poor operation if using your own solutions, especially for things that are already in the specification such as Low Power Nodes.

Regards,
Terje