RADIO Module - NRF52840 - Improved Protocol Recommendations

[ejbasile]

Hello,

I was wondering if I could bypass the protocols related to BLE transmission (GATT/ATT) and utilize the RADIO peripheral in a close to constant TX rate without regard for power consumption.

Are there any recommendations for Protocols that could either facilitate direct communication to my Mac or another NRF52840 device?

Thanks!

[Simonr]

Hi

It's indeed possible to use the radio peripheral without any specific protocol, but to communicate with I.E. a Mac without a specific protocol won't be straight forward. You'll need to use a protocol supported by the Mac you're using. I'm not sure, but ANT, or the nRF 802.15.4 radio driver here could be an option. To just transmit you can check out the radio test example here, which lets you transmit or receive "pure" radio events to test the antenna performance of a board.

Is there any specific reason why you don't want to use BLE?

Best regards,

Simon

[ejbasile]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the response. My reason for not wanting to use BLE is that my program, device that sends >=80KB worth of ADC samples a second, does not mesh well with the hierarchical-characteristic design of BLE/GATT. That implementation--repeatedly writing chunks of ADC Data to a characteristic--does not seem like I am working in the spirit of the original purpose of that protocol. My NRF52840 is integrated within the Arduino Nano 33 BLE.

I simply want a fast, lightweight protocol that I can send to a neighboring NRF52840 device or computer, I am just unfamiliar with radio protocols and cross-device wireless communications. 

Those routes look very promising. I'll look into those protocols.

I also found this forum post that I can utilize when configuring TX and RX packets: 

   devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../accessing-nrf51-radio-packet-data-outwith-payload