Is Particle's mesh and BLE suited for this use case?

[NiSt]

Hi all,

I have some general questions, but I couldn’t find the general category, therefore I’m putting the question in the Cloud Connectivity category.

1. Is it reasonable to expect Particle’s platform to support the following use case:
   Say, I register a mesh with a Boron and a bunch of Xenons with sensors attached to them. Then, they are all put out in the field with sporadic cellular connections (so the mesh isn’t always connected to the Cloud/online–possibly, majority of the time). Would the mesh still persist when the devices are offline but still powered on? What happens in the event all devices are down/out of power and are later powered on–would the mesh still persist then? Is it possible to expand the mesh using BLE in conjunction with it?

2. What are the current upper limits on the number of mesh and BLE connections?

Thanks in advance!

[shanevanj]

Let me try and answer so of this

@NiSt

Would the mesh still persist when the devices are offline but still powered on

Yes

@NiSt

What happens in the event all devices are down/out of power and are later powered on–would the mesh still persist then?

Yes (credentials are stored on the devices that will allow the resumption of the mesh)

@NiSt

Is it possible to expand the mesh using BLE in conjunction with it?

AFAIK - Not at this point

@NiSt

What are the current upper limits on the number of mesh ...

This thread has lots if interesting info about testing with large meshes - a common observation is that in a large (>10) mesh the end nodes (xenon in your case) should be sleepy (connect infrequently and send data and disconnect.) this is so that the total mesh bandwidth does not get congested.

Large Mesh Networks Thread

I have shared this in another thread, but figured it was worth sharing as a separate thread to see what others are doing. I now have a 56 Xenon mesh network running without any issues. 55 edge devices 1 gateway with an ethernet bridge connected to a Raspberry Pi over USB & Ethernet. If anyone has other large networks, I’m interested to hear about your setup and what you’ve seen so far.

This https://docs.particle.io/reference/device-os/firmware/xenon/#bluetooth-le-ble- has the best information re BLE - limits are listed at the end of the section linked above.

[jaredwolff]

In my experience, it’s tough to share between two always on Mesh/BLE connections. You’re sharing radios which makes the situation… problematic. The nice thing like @shanevanj mentioned is you can persist your non-could connections indefinitely. Even send messages back and forth.

I’d add that larger mesh networks start to fall apart especially when you connect your Mesh nodes directly to the cloud. In this case, you can use the edge router (Boron in the case) to receive updates and push them to the cloud. (i.e. there’s only one Particle Cloud connected device)

[NiSt]

@shanevanj thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!

@shanevanj

Is it possible to expand the mesh using BLE in conjunction with it?

AFAIK - Not at this point

Reading through more topics on the forum, it seems that one can do inter-mesh communication using BLE, so maybe it is possible in principal. The implementation is a whole different beast.

@shanevanj

This thread has lots if interesting info about testing with large meshes - a common observation is that in a large (>10) mesh the end nodes (xenon in your case) should be sleepy (connect infrequently and send data and disconnect.) this is so that the total mesh bandwidth does not get congested.

I have shared this in another thread, but figured it was worth sharing as a separate thread to see what others are doing. I now have a 56 Xenon mesh network running without any issues. 55 edge devices 1 gateway with an ethernet bridge connected to a Raspberry Pi over USB & Ethernet. If anyone has other large networks, I’m interested to hear about your setup and what you’ve seen so far.

Thank you, that was informative.

Thank you again!

@jaredwolff thank you for your answer as well!

@jaredwolff

I’d add that larger mesh networks start to fall apart especially when you connect your Mesh nodes directly to the cloud. In this case, you can use the edge router (Boron in the case) to receive updates and push them to the cloud. (i.e. there’s only one Particle Cloud connected device)

Makes sense, yeah!