pc-ble-driver-js provides a Node.js interface to the pc-ble-driver C/C++ library.
The pc-ble-driver-js library allows an nRF5 connectivity chip running Nordic Semiconductor's SoftDevice to be controlled by a Node.js application. The communication with the connectivity chip happens over serial port using BLE Serialization. The pc-ble-driver-js library is higher-level than pc-ble-driver and leans towards 'convention over configuration'. This module may be useful for tasks ranging from automated BLE testing to desktop applications and BLE gateways.
To install pc-ble-driver-js for use in a Node.js project, simply:
$ npm install pc-ble-driver-js
This will work as long as precompiled binaries exist for your platform/runtime environment, ref. the files attached to the Releases. If not, then it will attempt to build the binaries from source, which requires some additional setup as described in Installation.md.
A connectivity firmware needs to be flashed on the nRF5 IC before using pc-ble-driver-js. More information on this can be found in Hardware setup.
The examples and integration tests may be used as a starting point for development with pc-ble-driver-js. Examples include a heart rate monitor (BLE peripheral) and heart rate collector (BLE master) and show the basic structure of an application built on pc-ble-driver-js. To run the heart rate monitor example, verify your nRF5 connectivity chip is set-up and connected to your PC and run:
$ node examples/heart_rate_monitor.js <PORT> <SD_API_VERSION>
To get more information about the command options you can run the command without any arguments.
All functionality of pc-ble-driver-js is exposed through its api. Other directories in pc-ble-driver-js/ are for building, binding to C/C++, and testing, and a developer building an application on top of pc-ble-driver-js need not concern themselves with these details.
Adapter is the core component of pc-ble-driver-js's api. An Adapter sends serialized commands to the nRF5 connectivity chip, which in-turn executes the corresponding SoftDevice functionality. Any events the nRF5 connectivity chip receives from the SoftDevice are serialized and forwarded to the Adapter, which parses and handles these events.
An Adapter:
- Sends commands to the nRF5 connectivity chip
- Parses and handles events from the nRF5 connectivity chip
- Stores and organizes BLE related state
- Logs info with the specified verbosity
An Adapter does all this with a 'convention over configuration' approach, and this leads to a high-level api exposed to the developer. SoftDevice functionality is exposed by Adapter through a set of methods that often have default or optional parameters. Events are parsed and errors are checked for/handled by Adapter before being emitted for the application's use. BLE related state is maintained by Adapter and provided to the application through a simplified interface. This makes life easy for the developer, but in the (hopefully rare) case where finer control of the SoftDevice is required, this approach may be limiting. In this case the developer may need to create an issue, modify or extend api/, or if it makes sense, move to using pc-ble-driver directly in a C/C++ environment.
Follow the examples and integration tests for high-level best-practice use of pc-ble-driver-js.
https://NordicSemiconductor.github.io/pc-ble-driver-js/
Feel free to file code related issues on GitHub Issues and/or submit a pull request. In order to accept your pull request, we need you to sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA). You will see instructions for doing this after having submitted your first pull request. You only need to sign the CLA once, so if you have already done it for another project in the NordicSemiconductor organization, you are good to go.
See the license file for details.