SIMULATION of 100 devices.

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

Axel Schlueter — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 16:24:33 GMT

Hey Tesc,

Thanks for the reply, that makes sense.

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

tesc — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 15:35:54 GMT

Hi,

No worries regarding highjacking - that's what we have a public forum for!

As you write, QEMU emulation is supported by Zephyr. It should be possible to extend that to nRF Connect SDK projects, but as you have experienced full nRF Connect SDK projects including networking is not straight-forward and I am not aware of any examples or documentation for doing that, no.

I guess the key takeaway is - in particular for the questions raised in this thread - that we do not have resources for simulation setups. Much would be possible, but it will require you to do the work yourself with only minor direction from our side when needed.

Regards,
Terje

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

Axel Schlueter — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 15:20:09 GMT

Hi Tesc,

I'm briefly highjacking this thread because of what you wrote here:

> It is possible to emulate nRF Connect SDK applications using QEMU

Is there any documentation/example setup for this? I tried exactly this some time ago, and while it was somewhat easy to run plain Zephyr in QEMU I didn't manage to run the full nRF Connect SDK in QEMU with networking support.

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

tesc — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 14:40:59 GMT

Hi,

For a BLE device, there is support of up to 20 connections using the SoftDevice Controller. If you have 21 devices, you can set up this. Please note that you must have long enough connection intervals for the central to successfully schedule all connections.

If you want to simulate (i.e. on a PC or using fewer devices than what is actually intended) then I am sorry to say we don't really have anything for that.

Regards,
Terje

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

sne_333 — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 13:50:03 GMT

Hi Terje,

But implementing Bluetooth mesh will be a completely different project than what we have now. Can we atleast simulate 10 devices through one device? Is there any way to do it?

Thanks & Regards,

Snehal

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

tesc — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 15:19:52 GMT

Hi,

We have full Bluetooth mesh support in nRF Connect SDK, including support for all SIG defined models. Mesh "models" correspond to services and characteristics in BLE. You can also make your own vendor specific models. For supporting development we also have the nRF Mesh app. For an introductory presentation to Bluetooth mesh you can have a look at a webinar session from last November: Introduction to Bluetooth mesh. SoCs supported are nRF52832, nRF52833, nRF52840 and nRF5340. For more information, please contact our sales representative for your area. If you do not know who that is, please create a private ticket and ask, then we will provide contact details.

Regards,
Terje

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

sne_333 — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 12:33:36 GMT

Hi Terje,

Thank you for your reply. Can you share some information on how can we use Bluetooth mesh with nordic devices?

Thanks & Regards,

Snehal.

RE: SIMULATION of 100 devices.

tesc — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 12:04:58 GMT

Hi,

What you ask for sounds like highly specialized software, which is outside the scope of firmware and SDKs for nRF. It is possible to emulate nRF Connect SDK applications using QEMU, but that is not for simulating multiple devices communicating over BLE. For our own testing we use actual devices.

Please note that with our current BLE stacks for the nRF52 series devices, the SoftDevice for nRF5 SDK and the SoftDevice Controller for nRF Connect SDK, the maximum number of concurrent BLE connections is 20. For larger networks, you can either do a multilevel star topology or go for a mesh based solution such as Bluetooth mesh, Thread or Zigbee.

Regards,
Terje