I have worked quite a lot with BLE. But it was until last week that I did not get any exposure to Bluetooth mesh network. Till now I just managed to flash mesh sample to Nordic Semiconductor development kits and test the basic ON/OFF switch and light samples.
The advantage of using Bluetooth Mesh is that apart from traditional BLE communication that suffers from range and connection loss issues, the Mesh network is robust. Up to 32768 mesh nodes can be added in a single network that can span a huge area.
The nRF connect SDK provides the sample to turn and off the LEDs using buttons. The configuration is simple. You just need to flash the right sample to your devices. The VS-Code extension helps to create the right configurations required for the nRF devices. Basically, I have three devices.
nRF7002-DK - Flashed with mesh/light sample
nRF52840-DK - Flashed with mesh/light_switch sample
Thingy-53 - Flashed with mesh/light sample.
After we have flashed the sample, we can now run the nRF Mesh application and create the network. Once the network is created we can control the LEDs on the boards using the switch on the DK.
The things that are required to be taken care of are the following
- Create application key
- Create groups
- Create subscriptions and publications
- Control the LEDs
After the network has been configured, we can control the LEDs using the buttons on the DK.