Need NRF8001 to advertise while Microcontroller asleep.

[mattsEE]

I'm using an NRF8001 with an ATMEL ATMEGA 328P (the microcontroller from an Arduino). I need the microcontroller to go to sleep, but still allow the BLE chip to advertise and wake the microcontroller upon connection. It seems as though the BLE chip should advertise (after calling BTLEserial.pollACI()) while the microcontroller is sleeping, but this is not the case. Is this possible? If so how? Thanks in advanced.

void sleepNow(){ 
    set_sleep_mode(SLEEP_MODE_PWR_DOWN);
    sleep_enable();         
    attachInterrupt(0,ADAFRUITBLE_RDY, LOW); //Pin 2 is interrupt
    sleep_mode();            
    sleep_disable();        
    detachInterrupt(0);
}
void loop() {  
  BTLEserial.pollACI();
  digitalWrite(7,HIGH); //Flashes an LED
  delay(1000);
  digitalWrite(7,LOW);
  sleepNow();
}

[awneil]

Yes, the NRF8001 certainly can advertise while its controlling "host" is asleep - it is autonomous in this.

So the problem lies on your "host" side.

Does the advertising work if you don't put your AVR to sleep?

[run_ar]

I assume this is the adafruit library, so I don't know the details, but I would assume BTLEserial.pollACI only checks if the nRF8001 has any new events. To start advertising you need to send broadcast, connect or bond command to the chip.

[awneil]

Have you looked at Nordic's SDK - and the included examples:

ble-sdk-arduino

github.com/.../ble-sdk-arduino