How to map a gap event to a physical device?

[MichaelNordicUser]

What unique information can I use to know which physical device disconnected for example? Say I have a MAC address or a name encoded into the advertising packet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but connection handles are created after a connection is established. So how can I map a mac address or name to a connection handle?

[RK]

you can map the mac address beforehand and see who connects to you. Or since the device name is a required GAP characteristic you can get it from the device after connection. Many ways to do this

[MichaelNordicUser]

That's a great suggestion. The central can query the peripheral for it's device name. However, I still don't see a way to map an identifier in the advertisement data to the connection handle which would be more efficient.

[RK]

I don't see the problem. If you are checking advertisements you are the central. You then choose which device to connect when you connect. The result of that connection is the connection handle. So since you initiated the entire procedure you know everything all the way through.

[MichaelNordicUser]

That's the problem. I don't know everything all the way through. I don't have the connection handle until after the connection is established. If I look at the ble event data structure in the ble event call-back, there is a connection handle, but here is no other data. The handle is just a number. I don't know if this number is a handle on my tablet, my phone, or an NRF chip. When the soft device connect method is called, all information on advertising device is lost.

[RK]

of course you know - it was YOU who as central initiated the connection and YOU said whom you want to connect to. Since you can only have one connection procedure going on at the same time, you know when you get the connection it was the one you initiated.

Apart from that the peer address is in the connection event so you have multiple ways to do this.