Hi all,
I am working on an electronic lock using the nRF52840. Currently it works using Bluetooth Low Energy and the lock opens when a digital key has been sent. (it has measures against replay attacks, tampering with the payload and ensures the "digital key" is coming from my API). It has a characteristic to which a payload can be written. It also has a characteristic where it notifies the response to a payload to the connected central.
I am now looking for a way to implement mesh networking to increase range and use a lot of devices (most centrals can handle up to ~9 BLE connections). I would like to use a Zigbee or Bluetooth dongle with a raspberry Pi to send messages into the mesh network.
I use some Zigbee devices at home so I've been looking at that first, but after having a look at the Zigbee Cluster Libary Specification (page 399) it seems like I'm forced to change the way the entire product works. Basically what I would like to expose to the network is the following:
Input:
char[500] - used for payloads to open / configure the lock ( a payload can be retrieved from my API and sent to the correct lock )
Output:
char[500] - used to send responses generated by parsed payloads? Maybe there is a better way to return responses? bool - lock mechanism state (locked/unlocked) uint8_t - temperature (in degrees celsius) (maybe more sensor data in the future)
I am looking into the
nRF5_SDK_for_Thread_and_Zigbee_v4.1.0_32ce5f8/examples/multiprotocol/ble_zigbee/ble_zigbee_dynamic_door_lock_nus/example, but as far as I understand a boolean is simply set to open or close the lock. I'm still struggling to understand if what I want is possible with Zigbee and if it is allowed at all? If it is not possible or recommended to use Zigbee for this, would Bluetooth Mesh be a possible alternatives, or are these mesh technologies simply not capable of handling those amounts of data?
Thanks a lot for reading all the way through and I hope someone is able to clear it up a bit
