Beaconing and periodic Pairing

[Kaveh.M]

I have two nRF52832 feather boards. Trying to set a simple connection between them so that board 1 sends beacons and board 2 receive them. Every few minutes, board 1 pair with board 2 and receive some data to update some data in board 1. 

Are there any templates in SDK for that?

Thanks

[Simonr]

Hi

The distinguishing feature of a beacon is usually that only broadcasts data, and does not accept connections. A "connectable beacon" will just be a normal BLE peripheral. If you want it to advertise as a beacon for a time, and then switch to connectable, you will need to stop advertising and reinitialize the advertising module with "connectable" settings. I'm afraid we don't have any examples doing exactly this already, but you can check out the BLE multiperipheral application and try implementing the beacon feature so the device switches between beacon and "connectable" mode. Either by the press of a button, or a timer/event being called.

Best regards,

Simon

[Kaveh.M]

Thanks. How about the other board#2. My board2 is nRF52840 dongle. Are there examples to program dongle as a receiver of beacons for the period board1 is beaconing and then upon board1 connection request (timer based), this dongle pair with board1 (feather) and communicate some data?

[Simonr]

Hi again

We don't have a beacon scanner example in our SDK, but most examples shouldn't need too many modifications to be able to scan for beacon devices. Please check out this case, where this is explained by my colleague Terje.

Please note that this scanner probably won't need to be uninitialized and initialized with new configurations, as a scanner should be able to both detect beacons and connectable devices.

Best regards,

Simon

[Kaveh.M]

My Board 2 is nRF52840 Dongle PCA10059. None of the examples in nRF5_SDK_17.0.2_d674dde\examples\ble_central folder are developments for PCA10059. How can I use code for other boards in this folder for my pca10059? I want my dongle receive beacons and print it to the serial port.

[Simonr]

Please check out our Dongle Programming tutorial, it explains how you can easily edit pca10056 projects to fit the pca10059.

Best regards,

Simon