Can I communicate from one BLE microcontroller to another with nRF8001?

[alekhin]

Hey All,

I am working on a project that involves a Redbear Labs Blend as a sensor platform, then transmits the data to a dfrobot Bluno over nRF8001 BLE. I'm still new to both chips and naive to their limits... so my first question is is this possible?

If it is, could anyone point me in the right direction for me to actually getting them talking without using any iOS BLE apps? Most of these apps only work on iOS 7 and above, and I have a lowly old iphone 3 =(...

edit: nRF8001 is the BT chip that the Blend uses (slave), while CC2540 is the BT chip the Bluno uses (either slave or master, in this case it will be acting as the master)

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Hi

I do not quite understand your scenario yet. Does the Bluno have CC2540 or nRF8001 in order to communicate wirelessly over BLE? if you have the CC2540, that is BLE enabled and should be able to transmit your sensor data to your smartphone, so you would not need nRF8001 in addition. Can you clarify?

A BLE peripheral (slave) can only communicate with a BLE central (master). The nRF8001 is pure peripheral BLE device, so two nRF8001 can not communicate.

[alekhin]

Hi thanks for the response!

Sorry, my wording was a bit confusing... The plan was to have the CC2540 as the master, and the nRF8001 as slave. Like I said, the project does not contain a smart phone. The reason being the sensor platform will be outside a house, possibly out of reach of the internet router. The Bluno will act as a relay using the BLE technology to talk to the sensor, and wifi to send data through the router and onwards.

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Hi , sorry for my late response.

I think I understand your scenario a little better now. In order to transmit your data with the Blend Micro, you should download the Arduino SDK and start with the hello world example. The best thing to do would be to get a hold of iPhone 4S or later or an Android phone that is BLE enabled, in order to receive the raw data that you send out from the Blend Micro board. You can use i.e. BLE Explorer or LightBlue apps for IOS in order to receive the raw data from the Blend Micro board. When you have figured out how to output the right data and can receive it with the phone/tablet, then you can work on how to receive the BLE data on the CC2540 side.