nRF52832 + nRF5_SDK_17.0.2_d674dde + BLE/Beacon + Battery Voltage

[Dinesh]

Hi,

Greetings!

We are trying to understand how we can send battery voltage to mobile application from nRF52832 based battery operated device.

Please note that we are using AltBeacon protocol for communication.

Also is there any method in BLE services for the same.

Please guide us.

Regards,

Dinesh

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi Dinesh,

I do not know AltBeacon from before, but I see it has no direct support for battery voltage, so you need something custom. I can see a few possibilities:

1. From what I can see everything in the AltBeacon is fixed, except for the MFG RESERVED byte. According to the spec this is to be defined by the manufacturer, so unless you have another use of this byte you could probably put the battery voltage there.
2. I do not see any use of scan response packets in the AltBeacon spec, nor that it is prohibited, so another simple alternative could be to use a scan response packet with the battery voltage (and potentially other information).
3. A third option could be to alternate between advertising AltBeacon packets and other packets, either some non-connectable where you put the battery voltage in the advertising packet, or a connectable, so that the scanner/central could connect and then use the standard battery service.

Of these alternatives 1 and 2 should be quite straightforward, so unless there is a reason for preferring 3 I would use one of those.

Einar