Android Ble Mesh library - Scan unprovisioned devices

[Aheredia]

Hello,

First, I explain the context of the project:

• I have several ble mesh devices (generic onoff models) implemented with ESP32 modules that works fine with the nRF ble mesh nordic app.
• Now, I want to do my own android app.
• At this moment, I have a new project in Android Studio with the mesh module inside my project: 
  • 
• I have several callbacks prepared in the MainActivity code to test:
  • 

However, I don't know how I can scan the unprovisioned devices (I understand that is the first step). Is there any "scan unprovisioned devices" method in the library? Must I use another library to scan the devices? or is there another method of listening the beacons or something similar?

Please, I would appreciate any help to get started. Thank you!

Best regards,

Antonio

[Aheredia]

Hello again,

I believe that I found how the nRF mesh app scan the ble mesh devices. The android app uses the Ble Scanner from the Android library and filters the incompatible mesh devices, detecting if they don't have UUID.

Is that true?

[Roshan Rajaratnam]

HI Aheredia, the mesh library is independent of the BLE implementation. All ble operations including scanning, connecting and read and writing to characteristics are handled by the app. This allows the user to pick a BLE library of their choice.

So you have found the answer yourself. Yes the app scans for unprovisioned devices by filtering BLE devices using the mesh provisioning service. Similarly provisioned devices are filtered using the mesh proxy service and also uses the network ID to filter the devices belonging to the same network.

[Aheredia]

Thank you Roshan Rajaratnam.Then, the first step to make my own app will be to get a scanner for ble devices.

I suppose that I can use your library to do that:

https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/Android-BLE-Library

EDIT: Sorry I saw this comment in the readme file: 

• Note: The library does not provide support for scanning for Bluetooth LE devices. Instead, we recommend using Android Scanner Compat Library which brings almost all recent features, introduced in Lollipop and later, to the older platforms.
  • https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/Android-Scanner-Compat-Library

The last update of the Android Scanner Compat Library was 2 years ago and in the readme say "initially created in Android 4.3, has changed in Android 5.0 and has been extended in 6.0 and 8.0". Then, Is it a good solution as a ble scanner in the current Android versions (Android 13.0)?

Thank you. Regards,

Antonio

[Roshan Rajaratnam]

Hi, we could provide better support if you use our libraries.

ScannerCompat library is for scanning yes and this is what we use for all our apps and is working fine. Hope this answers your question.

[Aheredia]

Hi,

Then I will use your library. Thank you for your answers, I think that I will have more questions in a near future .

Regards,

Antonio