BLE 5 Advertisement packet not showing

[Domneck]

Hello,

We have already product with BLE 4 and now we are moving to BLE5. As per the example code we have updated our code to BLE 5 but we are not seeing advertisement packets but we are able to establish communication with different host/Central.  

Setup details:

SDK : nRF5_SDK_15.0.0_a53641a

Soft dev:s140_nrf52_6.0.0_softdevice

MCU: NRF52840.

Advertisement packet : Primary Phy:1M and secondary is: 2MPrimary Phy:1M and secondary is: 2M

Interesting observation is: BLE sniffer is able to show the advertisement packets but same we are not seeing with mobile, Our Gateway, and Laptop.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

Is it the primary advertising packets you are not seeing? You write that you are able to establish communication with a different central, and that is only possible when advertising, so clearly you must be advertising. As you can see the advertisement packets on the sniffer, can you confirm that they are the "normal" primary advertising packets on the 1M phy? Perhaps you can share the trace? Also, what is the centrals you have tested filtering on, could there be an issue there?

[Domneck]

Hi, 

I've done some modification on Nordic_Alert_Notif example to connect and exchange the data. I've attached sniffer logs.

And we are trying with different hosts like Android,iOS, Custom central node and Python scripts.

In android & iOS we are checking in nrfConnect app and we are not seeing our device and same with Custom central node  which is nrf52840 eval kit.

We are running Python script in laptop and we have 2 scripts one for discovering surround device and another one for connecting. In discovery we are not seeing but the same if I pass directly MAC ID to our connect script I can connect and read some dummy data.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

I do not see anything obviously wrong here. Could it be as simple as that you are testing with devices that does not support extended advertising (old or low-end computers or phones)? If you want to maintain compatibility with legacy devices, you need to do legacy advertising. The most elegant way to do that is to add a second advertising set, but that is unfortunately only supported in the nRF Connect SDK. With the SoftDevice and nRF5 SDK you would need to reconfigure and re-start advertising every time you switch between legacy and extended advertising.

[Domneck]

Hi,

This approach I can follow but still I want to understand what is going wrong here.

Yes I too checked all the possible things and I’m facing this issue from last one month.

I even managed to arrange latest phones and laptops.

Apple 14 Pro I’m using with latest iOS version and android is also latest and both I’m sure they have support for BLE 5.

[Einar Thorsrud]

I see, that should be no problem then. Are you able to make a minimal project that shows this behavior and runs on a DK and upload here so that I can test on my end?