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Electronics => Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff => Topic started by: abhishekkumar1902 on September 17, 2018, 07:33:07 am

Title: Selection of BLE chip and stack
Post by: abhishekkumar1902 on September 17, 2018, 07:33:07 am

I am new to Bluetooth in terms of its use and deployment in the embedded systems particularly when it comes to the selection of BLE chips, BT stacks, profiles, etc. I am planning a project in which I would be needing a BLE chip (& stack) which:
1.) can connect to at least 7 external sensors hosting profiles like Heart-rate, blood-pressure, indoor positioning, location & nav, etc
2.) can simultaneously act as a host to let an external wireless remote LCD display connect to it and send/receive display/HMI data to (maybe using some customized profile, etc)

I am looking for advice in terms of selection of the best BLE chip (& vendor) possible which has good support in terms of ecosystem/dev-tools, shorter time to market, etc. Also, I wanted to know if these BLE profiles can be integrated into the BLE chip's firmware itself that can be selected and controlled through an external host MCU, or is it also possible that these profiles can sit on the external host MCU itself.

Thanks in advance!

Title: Re: Selection of BLE chip and stack
Post by: taydin on September 17, 2018, 09:09:00 am

I would recommend using GNU/Linux for the software. It has a complete bluetooth stack (Bluez), is free software, and you are much more likely to get support if you run into issues. The downside would be that documentation is scarce, so you have to be ready to read the source code if you want to know how it will behave under certain conditions and that aspect is not documented.

Regarding modules, I have been using only WIFI/BT combo modules, no standalone BT, so I don't have anything to recommend ...

Title: Re: Selection of BLE chip and stack
Post by: abhishekkumar1902 on September 17, 2018, 10:30:39 am

I want to deploy this on a STM32 mcu which is running freeRTOS. I basically wanted a separate BLE chip which can also contain the BT profiles so as to offload the mcu from any extra processing!

Title: Re: Selection of BLE chip and stack
Post by: cgroen on September 17, 2018, 04:02:53 pm

I use CYBLE-212019 with success. Has a default firmware installed (Ez-serial) which makes it easy to use.
Other of the CYBLE products are even smaller footprints

Title: Re: Selection of BLE chip and stack
Post by: AloyseTech on September 18, 2018, 09:40:54 pm

I had multiple project using the BGM121 from Silabs (Any EFR32xG actually). They are nice to work with. The stack is easy to use and the profile configurator is great.