Remote provisioning for BLE mesh

[Brinda Pathak]

Hello team,

We are creating a proof of concept for our project related to BLE mesh network.

We have a requirement to provision mesh network from Custom board running linux(One of the mesh node in the network) to many nodes with Nordic nRF52840.

Our requirement is to use the linux board as a provisioner , because it is connected to cloud and gives more functionality to configure it well.

But our other mesh nodes(Some of them) in the network with Nordic chip is not in the direct BLE range of the linux board as provisioner. 

We would like to use PB-remote  (https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.nordic.infocenter.meshsdk.v4.1.0%2Fmd_doc_user_guide_modules_provisioning_pb_remote.html) functionality with our mesh network to solve that,

but can you please help us to know whether any linux program available to act as PBR-client? or guide us how to do that?

[Hung Bui]

Hi Brinda, 

Could you give us more information about the mesh implementation you have on : 

- The nRF52840 

- The Linux board 

Please be aware that the PB-remote is Nordic proprietary provisioning method so it may not be compatible if you use other standard Bluetooth Mesh.

If you plan to use a nRF52 that connect to the Linux board (via UART or USB) , then you can simply use the remote provisioning example out of the box on the nRF52 and control it via the Linux MCU, Just like what we show in the Test section. You may need to change the code to use UART instead of RTT but it shouldn't be a big problem. 

[Brinda Pathak]

Hi Hung Bui,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I use the below mesh implementations:

- The nRF52840: Mesh implementation from nRF SDK

- The Linux board: BlueZ

I have only BLE connection between nRF boards and linux board, so I need a solution to have PB-remote client in linux board(A gateway to all other nRF boards) to remote provision all the nRF mesh nodes.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Brinda, 
I'm afraid that we don't have any other material to assist you to create your remote provisioner on the Linux machine other than our Remote provisioning example in the SDK and the documentation here.
My suggestion is to build your application on Linux to do normal provisioning first and then from that implement the remote provisioning. From what I can see what you need to implement is only the PBR Client. You can refer to the Remote Provisioning example for that. 

[Brinda Pathak]

Thank you Hung Bui.

I get that.