This project utilizes the Concurrent Multi-protocol Timeslot API in the Nordic Semiconductor S110 v7.0 SoftDevice for the nRF51-series micro-controllers to run a scannable advertiser concurrently with the SoftDevice.
This project also contains an example to run a concurrent multi-protocol observer concurrently with the Softdevice.
The Timeslot advertiser and scanner accept a subset of the HCI command interface to control various parameters of their behaviour.
Scan Requests that arrive at the advertiser are also sent to the application. The scan requests are sent with the address, RSSI, channel and an experimental link quality indicator.
The experimental link quality indicator that counts the number of packets with CRC failures and the number packets with successful CRC has been addeed. This allows the application to have some awareness of the link quality. The link quality is returned by the observer and by the scannable advertiser.
S110 v7.0 production Softdevice nRF51 SDK v6.0
Copy the folders in this github repo to the s110 folder in the nRF51 SDK
The project contains an example of usage, where the Timeslot advertiser runs with an advertisement interval of 100ms, along with a SoftDevice powered connectable advertiser with an advertisement interval of 150ms.
The timeslot advertiser interface is based on the Bluetooth standard HCI interface, but only implements a small subset of the functionality. All interface functions are found in the ts_advertiser.h file under include/.
The timeslot advertiser offers reports related to radio activity to the user. The software interrupt indicated by the user in the btle_hci_adv_init() function is triggered when there are available reports in the queue. The user may then use the btle_hci_adv_report_get() function to pull reports from the queue. The reports contains total valid/invalid packets received and an HCI btle_evt_t that indicates what kind of event triggered this report.
NOTE: The BLE specification does not define any scan report events, so a special event type was added for this: BTLE_VS_EVENT_NRF_SCAN_REQUEST_RECEIVED. It contains an address and address type of the scanner in addition to RSSI and channel.
void btle_hci_adv_init(IRQn_Type btle_hci_adv_evt_irq);
Initialize the timeslot advertiser. The IRQ parameter decides which software interrupt to use for the generated events. For each report the advertiser generates, the selected IRQ flag will be set, and the user may get events from the queue using btle_hci_adv_evt_get().
bool btle_hci_adv_report_get(nrf_report_t* report);
Function for getting pending tsa reports. It is recommended to repeat this function until it returns false, as there may be more than one pending report in the queue.
void btle_hci_adv_sd_evt_handler(uint32_t event);
SoftDevice event handler for the timeslot advertiser. Takes any timeslot event generated by SoftDevice function sd_evt_get().
void btle_hci_adv_params_set(btle_cmd_param_le_write_advertising_parameters_t* adv_params);
Set the advertisement parameters for the timeslot advertiser. See hci/btle.h for details about the struct parameter
void btle_hci_adv_enable(btle_adv_mode_t adv_enable);
Enable or disable advertisement
void btle_hci_adv_data_set(btle_cmd_param_le_write_advertising_data_t* adv_data);
Set the content of the timeslot advertiser advertisement packets. This does not include any headers or address, as this is controlled internally. To set the advertisement address, use the btle_hci_adv_params_set() function.
void btle_hci_adv_scan_rsp_data_set(btle_cmd_param_le_write_scan_response_data_t* scan_rsp);
Set the content of the timeslot advertiser scan response packet. This is the packet the beacon will send to respond to external scan requests. This does not include any headers or address, as this is controlled internally. To set the advertisement address, use the btle_hci_adv_params_set() function.
void btle_hci_adv_whitelist_add(btle_cmd_param_le_add_device_to_whitelist_t* whitelist_device);
Add a scanner to the device whitelist. If the whitelist filter is enabled, only scanners on this whitelist will be accepted.
The filter can be enabled with the btle_hci_adv_params_set() function above.
void btle_hci_adv_whitelist_remove(btle_cmd_param_le_remove_device_from_whitelist_t* whitelist_device);
Remove a scanner from the device whitelist. If the whitelist filter is enabled, only scanners on this whitelist will be accepted.
The filter can be enabled with the btle_hci_adv_params_set() function above.
void btle_hci_adv_whitelist_flush(void);
Remove all scanners from the device whitelist. If the whitelist filter is enabled, only scanners on this whitelist will be accepted.
The filter can be enabled or disabled with the btle_hci_adv_params_set() function above. Note that this function does not disable the filter functionality.
The timeslot Observer interface is also based on the Bluetooth standard HCI interface, but only implements a small subset of the functionality. All interface functions are found in the nrf_scan.h file under include/.
The interface documenation for the Observer will be added in the next release.