Hello,

does MBED support implementing a peripheral to be connected simultaneously to more central devices using nRF 52 hardware? Nordic says so with their SDK, but I tried MBED test program (Heart rate monitor) and it actually supports a single connection from one central device.

My understanding is that a peripheral device stops advertising once a connection is established. I call startAdvertising() when I receive a connection callback.

This is very interesting question! I also would like different devices/mobiles to be able to connect to one BLE device.. will try that soon and report if find anything useful :-)

A common use case example for BLE is beacons in a museum providing information to visitors. A lot of general information could be simply broadcast, but you could see the central device connecting to a beacon to get more detailed information about a particular exhibit. You would think the beacon would need to support multiple connections to support the possibility of a crowd gathering around a popular exhibit.

BTW, according to the Bluetooth Low Energy team's UART page:

"Presently, you cannot have more than one active connection to a BLE device. For example, if you're working with a heart-rate application and you've connected to it using nRF UART for console output, then you cannot simultaneously connect to it from another heart-rate phone app."

Kentaro, have you used your technique to successfully support multiple connections?

Hello Thor, yes, my peripheral device is connected to multiple central devices.

That's great! Thank you, Kentaro.

All,

For me it worked when I called startAdvertising() in the onAdvertisingEnd event:

void onAdvertisingEnd(const ble::AdvertisingEndEvent &event) { _ble.gap().startAdvertising(ble::LEGACY_ADVERTISING_HANDLE); }