As a continuation of last week’s tutorial (Prototyping BLE apps on the nRF52840 USB Dongle (Part A)), where we covered the following: Adding header rows to the USB dongle Mounting it on a breadboard Connecting an external LED and an external push button to the dongle Reuse and modify a Nordic template BLE peripheral example to assign the correct pins to the external LED and button Flashing the USB dongle with the firmware (via the Programmer app part of nRF Connect for the desktop) If you haven’t gone through last week’s tutorial, I highly encourage you to do so before continuing with this post (you can read it here). In today’s tutorial, we will get to do some of the more fun stuff! We’ll go…
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In the previous post (The nRF52840 USB Dongle Tutorial (Part 1)), we explored how to use the new nRF52840 USB Dongle to enable nRF Connect PC applications such as the Bluetooth Low Energy application (central and peripheral emulator), the nRF Cloud Gateway application, and the RSSI Viewer application. More importantly, we also talked about how the dongle can be used as a development kit (similar to the main nRF52840 development kit). The low price and small size of this dongle make it perfect for prototyping projects that require devices in a small form factor (e.g. large-scale Bluetooth mesh deployments). However, the dongle also has a few disadvantages compared to the fully-featured nRF52840 development kit. Advantages More compact and much smaller in size Plugs directly into and powers from a USB…
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When it comes to Bluetooth Low Energy modules, chipsets and development kits, prices are only getting lower. Take for example the new nRF52840 USB dongle. The dongle costs only $10 and can serve as a great development kit with a few I/O peripherals including one button, two LEDs (one green, one RGB), and 15 GPIO pins. The nRF52840 dongle is a compact USB dongle that’s based on the nRF52840 chipset from Nordic Semiconductor. The dongle can be used in two main use cases: As a dongle that enables nRF Connect PC applications such as the Bluetooth Low Energy application (central and peripheral emulator), the nRF Cloud Gateway application, and the RSSI Viewer application. As a development kit that can run your own custom applications or the…
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In today’s tutorial: We’ll first take a step back and talk a little bit about interoperability and compatibility in Bluetooth mesh. Then, we’ll go through a demo of setting up a mesh network that includes a mix of off-the-shelf devices. Finally, we’ll go through the source code step-by-step and the changes needed to implement the functionality for this demo. Compatibility and Interoperability The power of having a standard like Bluetooth mesh that a certified device must comply to is: The ability to add devices from different manufacturers to any mesh network. The ability within the network for devices to interact with others that implement a common functionality in an almost seamless manner. This gives both manufacturers and consumers great flexibility in three main aspects: Choosing the…
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Now that we’ve covered the basics of Bluetooth mesh and also gone over how to run a simple example on the nRF52 platform, it’s time for us to dig deeper into the source code of each type of device/node involved in a mesh network. If you missed the previous posts in this series, you can find them all here: Bluetooth mesh tutorial (part 1): covering the basics as well as some of the different terminologies such as Nodes, Elements, States, Properties, Messages, Addresses, Publish/Subscribe, and Managed Flooding. Bluetooth mesh tutorial (part 2): covering terminologies such as Models, Scenes, Relay nodes, Proxy nodes, Friend nodes, Low power nodes, and the architecture of Bluetooth mesh. Bluetooth mesh tutorial (part 3): covering the concept of Provisioning and how security is handled in Bluetooth mesh. Bluetooth mesh tutorial (part 4): covering the…
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