BLE MESH and Proximity Monitor

[Alejandro]

Imagine I have developed a MESH made up of 50 Relay Nodes and I say only Relay Nodes because any of them must be able to relay and also able to initiate a message. In my application environment I need that any of the Relay Nodes in the MESH to also be able to connect to a Proximity Monitor (TAG "running BLE Proximity Profile") so they can relay the ID of the TAG that happened to get close to the Relay Node that would need to also operate as a Proximity Reporter (Proximity Profile).

Is this scenario possible? Can a MESH node also engage in a connection with a NON MESH node to exchange some data to be then sent over the MESH?

Hope I was able to relay my scenario.

Thanks

[Matt]

Don't imagine, try it out yourself :) Start with 10 nodes (1 DK and the other can be cheap breakout boards) and scale up progressively. The standard BLE mesh stack runs "alongside" the BLE stack so you can add your own application to interface with the mesh stuff.

Do watch out for the power consumption of the relay nodes though, as the radio is almost always "on" to listen and relay the mesh packets. Go through the mesh SDK document and code samples to learn more.

[ketil]

Hi,

It is possible for a node to support Bluetooth Mesh and Bluetooth GAP/GATT concurrently with our nRF5 SDK for Mesh. Please have a look at this blog post for more information.

Ketil