ANCS and nRF51822 : old notification + Apple Co Pro + 2 smartphones

[Thiroy]

Hello,

We are currently writing the spécifications of a new device with a Nordic nRF51822. We have some questions concerning ANCS :

1/ Do we need to add Apple co processor when using ANCS (My compagny is MFI) ?

2/ Can I subscribe to 2 different Notification Sources ? For exemple I would like to receive on my device the notifications from 2 different smartphones in the same time.

3/ Is it possible to have access to old notification. For example :

Case A : My device have subscribed to the Notification Sources. It receives the notifications but the smartphone goes out of BT range during 1 hours. When the smartphone comes back in BT range, does my device receive the notifications from the last hour ? Do it need to do a new registration ?

Case B : My device is subscribing to the Notification Source. Does it have access to the old notifications that are still in the smartphone notification center ?

EDIT 14/10/2015

Regarding your answer, I have one adtionnal question :

4/ Considering we can be notified for notifications that are already present in the notification center when subscribing this service, do we have access to the time when these notifications appeared in the smartphone notification center

Thank you for your help.

[Maulik Patel]

Hi Thiroy,

Here are your answers based on my knowledge with ANCS

1. I do not get your question clearly but if you are talking about adding company identifier in advertisement data then NO you do not need to add any company identifier in order to connect with ANCS.

2. No. Being peripheral as per BLE specs You cannot not connect to two master at a single time. But if you want to, then you can connect with both one after another.

3. In general yes, it is possible to have access to all the notification at any given time which are currently in iPhone's notification center.

Case A: On reconnection you need to enable notifications on notification source characteristic, on doing so iPhone will send you all notification which are currently in iPhone's notification center.

Case B: Yes, as mentioned above when you enable notification(if already enabled then first disable and then enable), it will force iPhone to send all currently pending notfication which are currently displaying in iPhone's notification center.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Maulik

Adding 4th Answer: Yes, Based on ANCS specifications for each notification you can request NotificationAttributeIDDate (On of the NotificationAttributeID of notification), this should provide you time information related to each notification individually.

[Anders Strand]

The information Maulik has provided is correct. About question 1: No, you do not need an apple coprocessor in order to use ANCS. About question 3: Keep in mind that you can set how many notification of each app the iphone keeps in the notification center. You can not access old notifications which have been removed from the notification center.

[Thiroy]

Thank you for your answers. It will help to specify the features of our device.

Regards, Thiroy