Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) in Zephyr OS

[bojan]

Hello everyone!

Has anyone ever implemented ANCS  (Apple Notification Center Service) in ZephyrOS?

We are using nRF51822 SoC with the goal to connect to the smartphone running iOS and exchange data. Do we need to implement ANCS in the code even though we don't want to receive BLE notifications from the smartphone?

I know that in nRF Connect SDK ANCS is part of the stack (link).

Thanks in advance for your time and efforts.

Sincerely,

Bojan.

[bojan]

Just to shed more light on the issue...

It seems we need ANCS implemented in the firmware so that the iOS application running in the background mode can receive notifications from nRF51.

Can we implement ANCS in nRF51822 running Zephyr OS?

[Vidar Berg]

Hello,

Yes, the ANCS GATT server is on the phone, and you need to implement the client for it on the nRF side. While we generally do not recommended using the 51 series with Zephyr (Compatibility matrix), I don't see any reasons for why it should not work either.

Have you tried to build our ANCS sample with your Zephyr installation?

https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf/tree/main/samples/bluetooth/peripheral_ancs_client

Best regards,

Vidar

[bojan]

Hello, Vidar Berg.

Thanks for the useful info. I am using Zephyr v2.6.0 and the west tool for compilation (so it's not nRF Connect SDK-based environment).

When I included the following ANCS-related things from the peripheral_ancs_client example into the prj.conf file:

CONFIG_BT=y
CONFIG_BT_PERIPHERAL=y
CONFIG_BT_DEVICE_NAME="ANCS"
CONFIG_BT_SMP=y
CONFIG_BT_GATT_CLIENT=y
CONFIG_BT_GATT_DM=y

# Enable ANCS client
CONFIG_BT_ANCS_CLIENT=y

# Enable GATT Service client
CONFIG_BT_GATTP=y

# Enable bonding
CONFIG_BT_SETTINGS=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_PAGE_LAYOUT=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_NVS=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS=y

and tried to compile, I got the following errors:

prj.conf:39: warning: attempt to assign the value 'y' to the undefined symbol BT_GATT_DM
prj.conf:42: warning: attempt to assign the value 'y' to the undefined symbol BT_ANCS_CLIENT
prj.conf:45: warning: attempt to assign the value 'y' to the undefined symbol BT_GATTP

error: Aborting due to Kconfig warnings

Do you have any idea what I am missing here?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers !

Bojan.

[Vidar Berg]

Hello Bojan,

The ANCS client service is a part of the nrf repo so you would have to copy it to your project as you are not using the nRF connect SDK. The implementation can be found here: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf/blob/main/subsys/bluetooth/services/ancs_client.c

Same goes for the GATT Discovery Manager and the Generic Attribute (GATT) Profile module if you want to include those.

Cheers,

Vidar