BLE 5 Long Range (Coded Phy, 125 kbps) mode. How to engage?

@mark_pdx that's great that you've made progress on this, and I'd love to do some testing with it. Can you submit a Pull Request with your changes into the DeviceOS Github repo? Feel free to message me if you need help with any part of that.

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Yes, we have custom-designed sensors based on the nRF52840. The application is very timely -- in-home monitoring of basic activities and environmental temperature in homes of elderly living alone. The Boron would give us a plug-and-play cellular gateway. Just need BLE 5 Coded Phy to get reliable range in most all homes. Happy to share more about project, which was awarded a National Academy of Medicine grant.

And thank you for bringing in tech help. I will work with Mariano on a pull request.

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@mariano thank you for the offer! I have created a fork and cloned it to a local repo. But I haven’t figured out how to make Particle Workbench in VSCode use that repo instead of one of the DeviceOS releases – the command “Particle: Install Local Compiler Toolchain” only offers the official releases as choices. Any tip?

@mark_pdx you can test your application with your DeviceOS changes by using a “custom DeviceOS build” in Workbench. See the first FAQ here to see how to set that up:

Note that when you do this, you should “Flash application & DeviceOS (local)” any time that you make a change to DeviceOS. When you’re done, you’ll want to go back to a normal release and flash that, so that cloud updates will work normally again.

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@mariano Thanks for the tip, it worked for me! I have submitted Pull Request 2287 in DeviceOS, and a corresponding PR in Docs.

This is my first time contributing here so I beg your patience if I’ve done anything improperly. I did not know how to write a unit test, but did provide a sample app. You would need a BLE device to transmit to the Particle Boron in PHY_CODED to fully test. Let me know if I can help with that.

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Well done @mark_pdx!
For those that want to interact with this from an Android device, Nordic themselves have this repo: GitHub - NordicSemiconductor/Android-BLE-Library: A library that makes working with Bluetooth LE on Android a pleasure. Seriously. which allows you to choose your preferred PHY. Coded PHY is supported in it as well.

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Very nice! Yes if you can, please share some more.

@gusgonnet Re my project, should I post more info here, or would an email exchange be better?

@mark_pdx I compiled your code and it seems to be working, but I can’t currently test it because I don’t have any devices that advertise with coded PHY. Do you know have a device that does that? Or ideally if you have the corresponding code to turn a Boron/Argon/Tracker into an advertiser that uses the CODED_PHY. I tried briefly to set that up, but I could not switch it away from the 1M PHY.

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@mariano I have sensors I designed that use CODED_PHY.

If you have a newer smartphone that supports BLE 5, you may be able to set up a CODED_PHY advertiser with the nRF Connect app (try this search on Nordic Dev Zone).

The engineers have responded to my PR with a request that it support CODED_PHY in advertiser as well as scanner mode. If I get that working, you could use another Boron as the advertiser. But it may take a few days…

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I’ve created a Pull Request for this functionality, and it is now awaiting review. It includes support for BLE Coded Phy advertising as well as scanning, with example apps that will let you test the range improvement using two Particle Boron devices.

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Hey Mark - thought I’d reach out and ask you more about your project! You mentioned that it was awarded a National Academy of Medicine grant? Sounds pretty cool, would be interested in knowing more about it!

@mark_pdx Thank you so much for your contribution! The Pull Request has been merged into the DeviceOS develop branch, and the long range BLE feature will be making it into a DeviceOS release soon.

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@mariano @gusgonnet @schaud Thank you all for your support in making this happen!

The system’s purpose is to support seniors who want to continue living independently. We designed custom BLE wireless sensors that detect motion of a refrigerator door, medication container, or other indications of normal activity, as well as monitoring indoor temperature. We found BLE 5 Coded Phy necessary to get reliable coverage throughout a residence. The Particle Boron serves as a BLE 5-to-Cellular gateway, relaying data from the 2 or 3 sensors in the elder’s home to the cloud. A companion app lets the seniors connect with each other. If normal activities are not taking place (or if excessive heat/cold is present) the senior’s peers are notified in the app, so they will check in on them.

Our prototype sensor looks like this:

The Gateway plugs into an ordinary USB wall charger, and the whole assembly basically looks like a night light. Photo:

You can learn more about the product being developed at http://carewheels.org/.

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oh wow, I’m speechless. What a great, noble, and useful project you are developing.
Thank you for posting details about it!
Gustavo.

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This is so great!

Hi Mark, I'm curious to know what IC did you use for the remote sensors.
If you can, please let me know.
Thanks!
Gustavo.

The remote sensors use the Laird 654 series Bluetooth module, based on the nRF52840 (Laird PN 451-00001). That Laird module includes a trace antenna and is FCC certified. The actual motion sensing is done with an LIS2DH12. We just had 75 of our PCBs fabricated and assembled at PCBWay in China, and I’m about to open the box and see how they check out.

thank you for the details, and that above is an amazing achievement! congrats!

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