Read UID and RSSI without manual connection

[wklimann]

Hello,

I need to read the UID and later on also the RSSI value of devices (Handys) in range. It should be reading the values automatically without the need of manual connecting. If some known device is recognized I want to trigger a task.

I think that I should use a BLE-Peripheral and not a BLE-Central am I right?

It would be great if someone could recommend a good starting-point example or necessary API calls.

Thanks in Advance

[Hung Bui]

Hi wklimann,

Could you elaborate more on the application? By "Handys" do you mean the phones/tablets or it's the nRF51 device ?

If you want to just detect the MAC Adress and RSSI without establishing a connection, you can just scan for advertising packet. It's similar to beacon application.

[wklimann]

Hello Hung Bui!!

Our application should be a nrf51822 device which allows to read the MAC address and the RSSI value of phones (or tablet) in range. If a phone with a previously stored MAC address is recognized (without any manual handling on the phone) we want to trigger a task on the nrf51822 like -> turn on a pin when in range (for example RSSI > -70dBm) and off when out of range (for example RSSI <= -70dBm).

If I understand the beacon application correctly it works the other way around - the phone reads the advertising (MAC, RSSI ...) of the nrf51 beacon but the beacon does not get information about the phone. Am I right ?

Thank you for your help!

[Hung Bui]

@wklimann: Correct, the beacon works the other way around.

In this case you can set the phone in peripheral mode and advertise, and use the nRF51 as central device. But it's only supported on iOS device, not on Androids.

What else you can do is to let the nRF51 advertise, and run a background app on the phone. The app will scan for the device and connect to it. After that you can send 1 (or a few) dummy packet for the nRF51 to detect the RSSI before you quickly disconnect. And allow other phones to connect to it.