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Connected, but not paired with >8 devices?

I am planning to use the nRF51822 and the s130 soft device to manage data coming back bluetooth sensor nodes. It is likely that there will be more than 8 peripherals, although I am fairly confident that not all of these nodes will require constant connection. They may just wake up occasionally, send their data, and go back to sleep.

In this scenario, would it be possible for the s130 to handle being bonded to more than 7/8 peripherals? Would it still be able to receive data from up to 20 connected devices if they weren't all connected and trying to send data at the same time? If so, will the s130 soft device manage these connections itself?

  • You can store data for as many devices as you want, although you will only be able to connect to 8 peripherals at the same time. If you multiplex the connections across time then you should have no problem at all.

    The SD will not manage this automatically, the bond information is stored by the application (see the peer manager included with the SDK to help you with that). The SD in fact knows nothing about bonds, it simply requires the security keys to be provided by the application on a per-connection basis.

  • Thanks, good to know it's possible! the implementation will be a headache for another day haha. Any idea on an upper limit for mutliplexed connections? And will an s110 soft device just wait it's turn if all 8 connections are active when it tries to connect?

  • Well there´s no limit for time multiplexed connections, you just connect to 1-8 devices, send some data, disconnect, connect to a different set, send some data, disconnect, etc.

    An s110 can only be a peripheral, so it will not initiate connections, it will listen and accept incoming connections. It's the central (master) that will establish the connection regime by sequentially connecting to all your peripheral (slave) devices one or several at a time.

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