In the last post in this series on Bluetooth mesh (found here), we provided a high-level overview of the nRF5 SDK for Bluetooth mesh. We also listed the different examples provided as part of the Nordic SDK. The most complete of these examples is the lighting example, and this is the one we’ll go forward with demoing and explaining. In this week’s post, we’ll go over building and running this example and understanding the different parts within it. In the upcoming posts, we’ll get into the details of the source code for each device. Here’s a diagram showing the network and the devices we’ll be using within it:   Hardware and Software Requirements The different hardware devices required in this example include: Two nRF52 boards…

This week we will continue our tutorial series on Bluetooth mesh. Here’s where you can find part 1, part 2, and part 3. But before we get into the practical implementation of an example on the nRF52 series platform, let’s better understand how Bluetooth mesh works on the platform. We’ll go over: The basics and architecture of the nRF5 SDK for Mesh How to install and configure the SDK Which development boards are compatible nRF5 SDK for Mesh Architecture Overview The goal of an SDK is to provide the developer with a set of APIs to make implementation easier and abstract out any unnecessary complexities in the underlying stack. Here’s a diagram showing the architecture of the nRF5 SDK for Mesh: Let’s go through each of the…

In this post, we’re continuing our tutorial series on Bluetooth mesh (you can find part 1 here and part 2 here). This will be the final post that will cover “theory only” content — in the upcoming posts we’ll start digging into more practice by implementing a Bluetooth mesh example on the Nordic nRF52 series platform. In this post, we’ll be covering the provisioning process as well as how security is handled in Bluetooth mesh. The Provisioning Process The provisioning process is one of the most important concepts in Bluetooth mesh. It is used for adding devices to the mesh network. A device that gets added to the network is called a node, and the device used to add a node to the network is called…

In last week’s tutorial (The Ultimate Bluetooth Mesh Tutorial (Part 1)) in this series on Bluetooth mesh, we covered the following: Basics of Bluetooth mesh Terminology: nodes, elements, states, properties, messages, addresses, publish-subscribe, and managed flooding. In this week’s tutorial, we’ll continue by covering a few more concepts within Bluetooth mesh, including: Models Scenes Types of nodes: Relay nodes Proxy nodes Friend nodes Low power nodes The architecture of Bluetooth mesh Let’s go through each of these in more detail. Models One important term defined in Bluetooth mesh is the concept of a model. A model defines some or all functionality of a given element. There are three categories of models: Server model: is a collection of states, state transitions, state bindings, and messages which…