BLE Mesh Network Combined With Advertiser Scanner Feasibility

[FormerMember]

I'm planning to implement a mesh network, where each node (ble device) also acts as a scanner, detecting BLE advertise messages. The mesh network would then forward the advertisement data packets to a gateway connected to one of the ble nodes.

A key phrase seems to the timeslot API.

I've found plenty of example source code:

github.com/.../ github.com/.../nRF51-ble-bcast-mesh

Looking at the developer zone and source, it all looks perfectly feasible so I plan to pursue this.

I see there may be issues with CPU usage, for example pstorage may be processor starved.

Any comments with regards feasibility would be appreciated.

[David Edwin]

This method is feasible, CPU usage is very low, the algorithm the ble-bcast mesh uses is Trickle. You can use the ble-bcast mesh itself as this does exactly this or you can choose to re-implement the mesh using the S130.

[Konstantin K]

Do this with S130. This is what I did. No need to mess around with timeslot API.

[David Edwin]

You should be able to do this with the S130 softdevice APIs, however the timeslot API provides flexibility to choose the radio channels and the on air bit rate to be tailored to your needs. If you are constrained to only using the BTLE advertising channels for the mesh then the S130 APIs may be a good initial option.