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Getting started with Bluetooth Mesh Network

This section describes how to quickly build a Bluetooth Mesh network using my light switch example without going through the complete toolchain installation.

There is no need to build any firmware for running it, as it uses the pre-built firmware of my light switch example.

Hardware Requirements

A minimal Bluetooth Mesh network requires at least One client, Two servers and One provisioner. Before starting to work, prepare the following parts:

Assembling the hardware

  1. Place the nRF52840-MDK board onto the Base Dock

  2. Connect the Grove - Button to PORT#1 on the Base Dock

  3. Attach the four plastic spacers supplied in your box to act as legs for the Base Dock

  4. Insert an AA battery into the holder the right way around as marked on the board

Tip

AA battery is NOT included in the kit. The Energizer® Ultimate Lithium™ AA battery is recommended to stay powered longer.

Flashing the example firmware

Before running my light switch example, you need to flash the boards. The pre-built firmware is located in grove-mesh-kit/firmware/bluetooth-mesh/my_light_switch:

  • For Client: my_light_switch_client_nrf52840_xxAA_s140_6.1.0_merged.hex
  • For Servers: my_light_switch_server_nrf52840_xxAA_s140_6.1.0_merged.hex

Tip

The provisioner firmware is not used here. The nRF Mesh app is used instead to provision the devices.

  1. Connect one nRF52840-MDK board to your PC using the USB-C cable. A removable drive named DAPLINK will appear.
  2. Drag and drop the pre-built client firmware into DAPLINK. After flashed, label the board Client so that later you don't confuse the board roles.
  3. Program the rest two boards with the pre-build server firmware. And label them Server#1 and Server#2.

Tip

You can also program the board using pyOCD. Just follow this tutorial to set up the pyOCD tool.

Provisioning the devices

To participate in mesh communication, each device must be provisioned. Provisioning is the act of adding a device to a mesh network. Through the provisioning process, the new device receives a range of addresses, a network key, and a device key.

Here we use the nRF Mesh mobile app to provision the client and server devices:

  1. Power up the client and servers
  2. Launch the nRF Mesh mobile app. In Network tab, click + button to scan the devices. The client is recognized as nRF5x Mesh Switch and the servers are recognized as nRF5x Mesh Light.

  3. Tap nRF5x Mesh Switch, and then go to the Provisioning Data configurations. Give the node a friendly name, such as Living Room Switch. Upon tapping IDENTIFY, the LED is blinking blue. Tap PROVISION and select No OOB type to finish provisioning.

  4. Tap ⚙ to configure the Living Room Switch. You will see two Generic On Off Client elements. Bind them with the same app key. Set the publish address of the first Generic On Off Client to 0xCAFE and the second one to 0xCAFF. The publish addresses can be subscribed by the servers.

  5. Tap nRF5x Mesh Light and go to the Provisioning Data configurations. Name the nodes Living Room Light 1 and Living Room Light 2. Go ahead to finish provisioning.

  6. Tap ⚙ to configure the Living Room Light 1 and Living Room Light 2. Bind the Generic On Off Server with the same app key as the client. Set the subscribe address to the client's publish address 0xCAFE or 0xCAFF.

Testing the mesh network

Now you have set up a Bluetooth mesh network with one client node and two server nodes. Try to press the buttons on the client to see the LEDs getting toggled on the associated servers.

Next Steps

See the Setting Up the Mesh SDK section for information on environment setup.

Once you set up your nRF5 SDK for Mesh environment, see the Building & Running the examples to build the examples on your own machine. And further more, you can create your own targets.

Create an Issue

Interested in contributing to this project? Want to report a bug? Feel free to click here: