nRF8001 UART-over-BLE

[Craig]

I have seen at least one person here who has gotten Nordic's UART-over-BLE example app running on the nRF8001. How was that done? Where is it? This example app is not included in the 8001 developer kit. This is what I think I will be the easiest way to use BLE in our product since the device we are building is not similar to any "standard" device and only needs to work with our proprietary software which will run a smart phone or tablet. Alternatively, an implementation of the RFCOMM protocol might work.

I am very new to Bluetooth and all this is rather overwhelming. Can anyone point me to a UART over BLE example application (preferably with a corresponding smartphone client component) that I can port to my processor? Thanks.

[Craig]

To answer my own question, I have found what appears to be an excellent sample app from Adafruit which does exactly what I need and nothing else. It creates a Nordic UART service which should work with Nordic's iOS and Android utilities. Why doesn't Nordic include something like this in their SDK...?

[ovrebekk]

Hi Craig

Bluetooth SIG purposefully didn't implement a generic UART profile, since the idea behind BLE is that you should create your own proprietary profile if you want to do something non-standard.

For a while Nordic followed the same line, but eventually caved to demand and created our own UART service that customers can used for reference.

I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I think this was done after the release of the nRF51 series, at which point we stopped adding new features to the nRF8001 SDK.

In general I would recommend switching to the nRF52 or nRF51 series if you are planning to develop for BLE. If you need an external MCU anyway you can simply flash the nRF5x device with the ble_app_uart example, and send data to it over the UART.

Best regards
Torbjørn

[Craig]

Thank you Torbjørn for the information. I don't think using the nRF51/52 is really a good option for us since it is larger and we are already very tight on PCB space. Additionally, having to flash another microcontroller inside the nRF51 adds additional per-unit labor cost, etc. which we would like to avoid if at all possible. That said, why do you suggest the 51? Is the 8001 going away?

[ovrebekk]

Hi Craig

Thanks for the clarification. The nRF8001 is not going anywhere, but for most new designs it is recommended to use the latest generation of devices.

The reason for this is all the improvements added in the later generations of devices, providing better performance, lower power consumption, higher BLE bandwidth and Bluetooth 5 compliant stacks to name a few.

That being said, if the nRF8001 fits the bill and does what you need then there is no problem using it. We will sell our devices as long as people keep buying them, unless our production partners close down the line (unlikely to happen any time soon, and if it does we get a 12 month warning that we can pass on to our customers).

Best regards