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nRF51 beacon scanning + BLE connection to central?

Hello, I am a beginner. Just bougth a nRF51 DK but have not received it yet.

My second question of the day, very related to my first one, but thoutgh they were different enough as to split them.

You can read here my first question: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

My question: is it possible with an nRF51 chip to scan beacons while being connected to a smartphone and sending/receiving data with it?

I want to have 4-5 beacons in my room (also made with nRF51) and want to make a beacon scanner with another nRF51 to read these beacons' info (minor,major...) and RSSI, while at the same time I exchange some data with my smartphone.

Extra info: My smartphone does not support BLE peripheral (as 90% smartphones) so I believe that I will have to use my beacon scanner in peripheral role in order to communicate with it, or maybe two central devices can stablish a communication?

Data exchanged with smartphone is very little, lets say 50 bytes each time, or less, in both ways.

All this does not have to be strictly at the same time. For example I can imagine something like scan beacons for 100ms, change mode to peripheral, connect to smartphone and exchange data for other 100ms, etc. So I get each job done at 10Hz. Of course higher frequency is better. Maybe with S130 there is no need to switch to peripheral?

Extra request: If this is not possible (as I expect), do you think it should be possible with:

A) using two nRF51822 chips on the same pcb. Is this even possible? Couldn't find anything related.

B) using different protocols like ANT, or BLE+ANT?

C) using that strange stack that makes the nRF51 chip work like IPv6? Maybe this could help since in fact I want to connect to many things (beacons + smartphone) like in a network? I am very lost here.

Thank you very much for your time and any hint is appreciated. Of course I will also accept references, links, docs, etc. to read and learn better.

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  • Hi Luis,

    Yes, it's possible. You just have to use our S130 softdevice. This softdevice support one central link (where it can be peripheral and connect to a phone) and can do scaning when in connection. It can also have 3 peripheral link where it can be the central and connect to other peripheral, at the same time when it's connected to a phone and do scanning.

    Of course, since the radio will be occupied for keeping the connection(s), scanning timeslot will be reduced compare to when having no connection.

  • Thank you very much for the answer, very good news! :) I will read further and come back if more questions arises. Very happy with this tech support! By the way what do you think about two nRF51 chips on same pcb? Is it possible? Any source or link about this or should I open a new question?

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