daisy-chain mesh for 6lowpan over ble using nRF52840

[Evgeny Erlihman]

Hello,

I really like the new nRF52840, especially it's Bluetooth 5 capabilities. The thing is that i cannot figure out if i would be able to make nRF52840 based devices to communicate (6lowpan over ble) one with each other without having a dedicated router to rout the traffic.

Using a router is not the best option for me because my mesh would probably look like a long daisy-chain so not every node would be in range of the router.

Thanks, Evgeny

[Petter Myhre]

Glad you like it :)

If you want to do IPv6 over BLE the only solution we offer today is the nRF5 IoT SDK. This doesn't support nRF52840, only the nRF52832, but it shouldn't be too hard doing a port.

In this SDK the IPSP and 6LoWPAN libraries only support node role. The IoT SoftDevice that is included supports Connection Oriented Channels with the Credit Based Flow Control Mode, which is needed for transport of IPv6 packets. It can take a GAP peripheral role.

For router role you would need a SoftDevice that supports Connection Oriented Channels with the Credit Based Flow Control Mode and that can take a GAP central role, which we currently don't have. In addition the IPSP and 6LoWPAN libraries would need support for router role, which they don't.

Are you sure that you need to IPv6 over BLE? Maybe something like nRF OpenMesh or OpenThread covers your use case?

[Evgeny Erlihman]

Can I use nRF OpenMesh with nRF52840 or any other Bluetooth 5 product?

[Petter Myhre]

nRF OpenMesh doesn't current support the nRF52 Series, but it seems work is being done to get there. See this. What Bluetooth 5 features do you need?

[Evgeny Erlihman]

I tried looking at the discussion you pointed me at, but i cant figure out the timelines for OpenMesh support for nRF52, if there are any.....

[Petter Myhre]

I'm not sure we have a fixed timeline for it. If you want information about future releases you should contact the regional sales manager for your area, if you don't know who it is, sent me a PM with your location and I'll let you know.