Particle Mesh for the event management - Need Help

Connectivity BLE // NFC
, ,
1

Dear Team Particle,

I’m developing the use case of Smart wearable Badges for the event management using particle mesh where 1. Xenon is getting used as core of the badge and BLE scanner as the various locations for the localization/people tracking. The key use case of badges are sharing of the information to each other on pressing the switch when two badges are closed to each other - So technically the badges should be in Peripheral and central mode when pressing the switch. But I’m getting very heavy delay while executing this scenario. I need help with the entire project. The key requirement of the project is as follows :slight_smile:
•All Beacons should be in the BLE mesh network with connectivity to the cloud gateways (Wifi Type) at certain distance with repeaters/relay nodes at every 100 meters.

•Beacon should have 1) Single Push button and 2) 3 RGB LED (Normal RGB or WS2812) – Low power

•Beacon should be Coin Cell powered with CR3032 3V 500mAh or CR2032

•Each beacon should advertise in two pattern –

•1. Heart beat Message (ID, Tx Power, RSSI, Battery % ) with x time interval to the àgateway/beacon scanneràCloud – for the real time indoor tracking/Zone specific Heat maps

•2. Based on Switch event- when the user is pressing the switch on both beacons closed to each other (within 6 inch of distance) – based upon the proximity detection it should advertise and exchange the data to each other and based on the connectivity to the gateway, it should publish the data to the MS Azure IoT Hub. (should require EEPROM storage to store the data temporary until publish to the cloud).

•There should be Publish-Subscribe method from Gateway to all beacons to broadcast the common message to blink the LED with custom colours.

•Message Customization : User should have the API to select the ID’s of the Beacons to whom they want to send the messege (color code) of the LED to blink.

•Message Routing: Cloud -à All the gateways -à Connected beacons to the gateway

2

Sounds like a great project! What particle device(s) are being used in this instance? The only problem I see in the description above is the delay in response - so post the code you are using (and the dev environment and the Device OS version ) and I am sure someone can suggest a solution.

3

I do see some issues tho'
Currently multi-gateway meshes (aka HA or High Availability) are not yet supported and there is currently also no support (or plan) for roaming devices (switching between independent meshes).
The next thing is this

This is a stretch. Under ideal conditions with somewhat directional antennae and low radio noise in the 2.4GHz band this may work but in real life situations in a venue where you have no control over potentially loads of 3rd party mobile devices radio interference can pose a problem.

1 Like
4

Particle Mesh is not BLE Mesh. Really wish it was but it uses LowPAN and OpenThread 1.0. It might be that a BLE Mesh SoM and gateway might be more realistic for you.
I would also second @ScruffR about the range and reliability of operation in a conference room environment with many Bluetooth devices and many Wireless access points and hotspots. Definitely one to test early on before buying many devices.

To power the devices from a Coin cell at 3V means going around the PMIC on the Xenon so I would rather use a small LiPo battery 500mAh which would also be rechargeable!

The rest of what you have as requirements could be done using Mesh pub/sub and BLE on the Xenon.