How to communicate with Nordic nRF52833 BLE 5.0?

[Hamilton Woods]

Disclaimer: I am a BLE newbie.

I am tasked with developing interface software to communicate with a device under test that uses the Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip. The tester computer is Windows 7 Pro 32-bit. Unfortunately, there is no path available for upgrading the OS on this computer and lead time for obtaining a new Windows 11 industrial computer is unacceptable. It is acceptable to connect a small computing device to the tester computer.

The communication software needs to be able to connect (directly, or indirectly through another computing device) to the device under test and read and write characteristic values using GATT.

I have successfully connected to the BLE device using nRF Connect for Mobile on an Android smartphone. I have listed the services, listed the characteristics for each service, and read and written characteristic values.

I have tried using BTFramework (demo mode) on a Windows 10 Pro computer to connect to the device, enable encryption, list the services, and list the characteristics for each service. I have not yet been able to read or write characteristic values (error codes are returned).

I have tried to use nRF Connect for Desktop from a Windows 10 Pro computer. nRF Connect for Desktop does not recognize my Realtek Bluetooth 5.1 USB dongle.

I have tried to use bluez gatttool from a Raspberry Pi 4 computer (Seeed Studio reTerminal) using the built-in BLE interface. I can connect, list services, and list characteristics for each service. I have tried reading characteristic values, but I don't know if I've been successful reading characteristic values. The response is a .

I have some questions:

1) What platforms can be used to communicate with the Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip? (Windows 7 Pro, Arduino-like board, or Raspberry Pi with Raspbian or Windows 10 or 11 IoT Core, etc)

2) What software tool (command line or programming library) could be employed for automated connecting to a device that has a Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip and read/write characteristic values?

3) What USB dongles are compatible with the Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip? (Is the Nordic nRF52840 a candidate?)

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

I have tried to use nRF Connect for Desktop from a Windows 10 Pro computer. nRF Connect for Desktop does not recognize my Realtek Bluetooth 5.1 USB dongle.

That is correct. nRF Connect for Desktop Bluetooth use SoftDevice serialization, and only works with selected nRF52 DKs and dongles. As this is based on older SoftDevices there is also very limited support for newer Bluetooth features.

1) What platforms can be used to communicate with the Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip? (Windows 7 Pro, Arduino-like board, or Raspberry Pi with Raspbian or Windows 10 or 11 IoT Core, etc)

As Bluetooth LE is standard, any Bluetooth LE device can in principle communicate with the nRF52833 via Bluetooth. However, if you need to use some modern features that needs to be supported by the peer as well. A linux computer like an RPi with a natively supported Bluetooth connectivity device, or even a nRF DK with the HCI over USB (or other appropriate interface). Then you can use BlueZ as the host (there is some relevant documentation about that in the HCI over UART sample documentation).

2) What software tool (command line or programming library) could be employed for automated connecting to a device that has a Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip and read/write characteristic values?

This dependson the HW you chose to use, though I would pick what works for you from an SW perspective first, and then obtain the HW that is needed. Blutooth LE and Windows is not always straight-forward and we do not have much experience with Windows Bluetooth development, but you can make a native Bluetooth application using Windows Bluetooth APIs. Microsoft has some documentation and examples on that. Other alternatives could be to use pc-ble-driver-py together with a nRF52 DK or dongle, or the Zephyr shell, where you could interface with the command line interface via a script.

3) What USB dongles are compatible with the Nordic nRF52833 BLE chip? (Is the Nordic nRF52840 a candidate?)

As Bluetooth is standardized, any Bluetooth dongle can in principle be used, both with Nordic devices, and other devices. But to use nordic tools (which may not be the best in this case depending on your requierments), you would need to a supported DL o r dongle, for instance the nR52840 DK or nRF52840 dongle.