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Marko Huhta
Marko Huhta
Associate
May 11, 2018
Question

BlueNRG BLE stack port

  • May 11, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 799 views
Posted on May 11, 2018 at 07:37

Is it possible to use BlurNRG BLE stack in STM32F103 CPU and use UART as a HCI interface to any Bluetooth chip?

Read through BlueNRG manuals and those looks like BlueNRG is ment to be used only in SoC and ACI layer between SoC and actual uC having applications. I am having one other vendor's Bluetooth chip that is eating HCI commands overt he UART so willing now to use STM32F103 with BlueNRG BLE stack sending HCI messages over UART. 

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Antonio Vilei
Antonio Vilei
ST Employee
May 11, 2018
Posted on May 11, 2018 at 17:40

Dear Marko,

please take a look at this thread about 

https://community.st.com/0D70X000006SqsVSAS

.

The BlueNRG-1 chip can also be used as a standalone solution, running both the user application and the BLE code. If you need more processing power, however, you can use an external microcontroller like your STM32F1 and communicate either via UART or SPI as described in that thread.

Best regards,

Antonio

Piotr Romaniuk
Piotr Romaniuk
Senior
May 11, 2018
Posted on May 11, 2018 at 19:11

Marco,

unfortunatelly you cannot.

ST bluetooth stack consists of following parts:

a) envelope for commands/events sent via SPI - this is for host microcontroler (e.g. STM32),

b) transport layer that communicates via SPI and passes commands and events to effective Bluetooth stack (part running on BlueNRG)

c) effective stack (also running on BlueNRG).

Please note that communication on SPI is not HCI oriented but rather ACI (application and vendor specific).

The most important part [c] is closed source, you have only compiled library that you link with transport layer [b] (at least this source of that is provided).

Little complain to ST: It would be nice to have sources of the stack and more documentation of BlueNRG radio part. 

Regards,

Piotr

PS

If you are interested how [a] and [b] communicate, please refer to:

UM1755 BlueNRG Bluetooth LE Stack Application Command Interface (ACI)
Marko Huhta
Marko HuhtaAuthor
Associate
May 14, 2018
Posted on May 14, 2018 at 06:21

Thanks.

My main point was to not use BlueNRG chip anyway but only BLE stack from it to my other CPU and other vendor's Bluetooth chip using UAR HCI. But as romaniuk.piotr said it's not possible and that's what was afraid of and also what I understood from specifications.

I need to find some other BLE stack, e.g. BlueKitchen which seems to have porting done for my CPU. 

Any other suggestions for STM32 BLE stack?

Marko

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