SDK choice and access to advertising PDU data

[Peks1]

Hi,

I'm planning to develope a set of BLE mesh devices (one control unit which is the coordinator and configurator) and sensor devices (low-power, friend and relay nodes or combination of).

I would also need to be able to receive advertising data from a device but which won’t be paired with the coordinator. I understand this as that we’d also need BLE central functionality. 

My questions are:

1. Is nRF Connect SDK the best choice or should I consider nRF5 SDK + SoftDevice140? Best in this case means easiest and quickest way to achieve results. I'm not familiar with Zephyr and I've been told it has fairly steep learning curve so I'll perhaps avoid that. I've got nRF52840 DK and a module with the same chip.

2. How do I access the advertising PDU using the SDK of choice (probably nRF Connect SDK) to retrieve data? I haven't found an explicit way for this despite looking. Perhaps I've not looked in the right place.

3. What else would I need in addition to the SDK of choice? Libraries, suggested examples etc.?

I am new to whole Nordic ecosystem, device and SDK and I'm not a hard-core SW developer but have read through tutorials and examples also for SES IDE development. So, I think I know enough to be dangerous. ;)

Many thanks.

[Elfving]

Hey again Peks1! Thanks for waiting.

That sounds like a plan!

This would be possible with both nRF5 SDK for Mesh and NCS, but I would recommend that you use NCS as that is where our focus will be going forward. This means that you can get better support and updates. It is essentially the future-proof option.

The PDU is encrypted, and handled by the stack. When it comes to how to retrieve data it would depend on the model. You typically have a data structure for the parameters the model controls, along with relevant metadata etc., and then you change its values using callbacks. 

It is a good idea to start off with an example, and work off of that. For your use case I think the sensor & sensor observer demos might be the most relevant, though all the examples can be helpful in giving you an introduction. I would also recommend taking look at their innerworkings (for instance model_handler.c in the sensor observer) to see how the data is being gathered through the API.

I guess there should be more tutorials on mesh available, though you always us here on DevZone. Let us know if there is anything else!

Best regards,

Elfving