We are in the early design stages of our product for which we are considering Particle devices. We have multiple devices located in close proximity (5-10 feet) in a retail store environment and would like for one unit with a Boron be able to discover the others via BLE and collect small amounts of data from them and then communicate it back to us via the Particle cloud. We essentially want to have the devices form a mesh and then the device with the Boron handle the backhaul to the cloud.
Our question: Can particle devices form a mesh with BLE to achieve what I have described above? What sort of Particle module would we need in the devices that will just be communicating with the Boron?
Particle devices no longer support Thread Mesh, and do not support actual BLE mesh.
It is possible to exchange data using BLE, however end devices (BLE peripherals) would only communicate with the BLE central device, not each other. And this would only be data exchange, not a full cloud connection, so the peripheral devices would not have things like OTA code updates.
The other important limitation is that the BLE central device can only connect to 4 peripherals concurrently, so you’d be limited by that, or would have to disconnect and reconnect between a larger number of devices, or use a different method of communication, like BLE advertising.