NRF_ERROR_BUSY returned, re-starting BLE beacon advertising

[Brian]

Hey guys,

Working with the simple be_app_beacon example on nRF51. I’d like to be able to stop and start advertising. But after stopping advertising, I’m unable to start it again. On the call to start advertising I’m getting an err_code of NRF_ERROR_BUSY.

I’m guessing the structure of the code here isn’t allowing the BLE stack to process the previous call to stop the advertising, before I try to start it again. Is there a really simple, nice way to fix this? It's just a basic NON connectable beacon. See simplified code below in my main loop.

Sorry for the newb question. Hoping to keep the code really clean. Much appreciated.

Thanks, Brian

main() {

ble_stack_init();

adv_beacon_init();

advertising_start();

delay_flag = FALSE;

app_timer_start(…); // sets delay_flag to FALSE after 1 second

while(delay_flag) power_manage();

sd_ble_gap_adv_stop();

//do stuff here… not BLE related

err_code = sd_ble_gap_adv_start(); //!!! here’s where err_code == NRF_ERROR_BUSY

//do more stuff, then call sd_power_system_off();

}

[Petter Myhre]

#define APP_CFG_NON_CONN_ADV_TIMEOUT  1
#define NON_CONNECTABLE_ADV_INTERVAL    MSEC_TO_UNITS(1000, UNIT_0_625_MS)

This will send one advertisement per second for 1 second.

#define APP_CFG_NON_CONN_ADV_TIMEOUT  0
#define NON_CONNECTABLE_ADV_INTERVAL    MSEC_TO_UNITS(1000, UNIT_0_625_MS)

This will send one advertisement per second forever, or until you call sd_ble_gap_adv_stop().

If you always want to stop the advertisements manually you can set the timeout to 0.

[Petter Myhre]

If you are not doing anything else, for example scanning or something else (I don't know what SoftDevice you are using) the advertisement will be sent pretty quickly, but exactly how fast I don't know. 100 ms should be fine. You can find out by using Radio Notifications or a sniffer.

You can also skip the timer. Set the timeout to 1 second, and the interval to for example 1100 ms. Then when you get BLE_GAP_EVT_TIMEOUT you start advertising again, or not.

I also want to point out that when I say one advertisement, I mean three advertising packet on each of the three advertising channels.