any-to-any communication based on Enhanced Shockburst (ESB)

Question

Hello, 
 While looking around for documentation and some references for Enhanced Shock Burst protocol, I came across one sample in NordicPlayground: https://github.com/NordicPlayground/nrf52-esb-broadcaster ( I didn't yet test the example that I referred to above, it seems to have be with the older SDK, will port it to work with the latest SDK ) which is more or less what I'm looking for in one for our use case. In our use case, mobile robots will communicate data with each other to have some awareness, this is only required for the robots in the vicinity. Basically, the initial idea was to use BLE extended advertising and scan, but ESB looks better than that. It would be helpful if anyone who got experience with the ESB could point me in the correct direction.

ovrebekk · Accepted Answer

Hi 
 This example does sound relevant to your use case, but it is true that the example is quite old. For the nRF52 series there is a choice between the older nRF5 SDK (and old version of which is used for the github example), or the newer nRF Connect SDK. Only the nRF Connect SDK is under active development, and I would recommend using this SDK for ESB projects since the library here is more actively maintained. 
 The basic principle when establishing a many-to-many network with ESB is to keep all devices in RX mode as long as they have no data to send, and only switch them to TX mode when you want to send something. 
 Additionally it is important to disable the ACK feature to avoid multiple receivers trying to send an ACK packet at the same time. 
 While the examples in the nRF Connect SDK look quite different from the older nRF5 SDK examples the ESB library is based on the same code, and the API is very similar. It should be possible to put together a new example based on the nRF Connect SDK while using the github example for reference. 
 Best regards Torbjørn

any-to-any communication based on Enhanced Shockburst (ESB)

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