Advertising
A BLE device can advertise itself for other devices to see it. So in the base form, BLE advertising will just advertise the address of the BLE device.
import ble main: device := ble.Device.default advertiser := device.advertise advertiser.start advertiser.wait_for_done
Name
Sometimes it can be beneficial to advertise the name of the BLE device. That can be for debugging purposes or when a protocol requires it.
import ble main: device := ble.Device.default data := ble.AdvertisementData --name="Toit device" advertiser := device.advertise advertiser.set_data data advertiser.start advertiser.wait_for_done
The name is included in all advertisements, so power and bandwidth is saved by omitting it.
Service classes
To signal what services the device implements, service classes can be added to the advertisement data. Service classes are represented as UUIDs.
import ble BATTERY_SERVICE ::= ble.uuid 0x180F main: device := ble.Device.default data := ble.AdvertisementData --service_classes=[BATTERY_SERVICE] advertiser := device.advertise advertiser.set_data data advertiser.start advertiser.wait_for_done
In case the advertised UUIDs are 16 or 32-bit BLE uuids, the system will automatically report them as such.
Manufacturer data
The manufacturer data field is a custom payload that can be sent with an advertisement. The first two bytes is the company ID followed by the payload. The sequence [0xFF, 0xFF]
can be used for testing purposes.
For example, the manufacturer data field can be used to periodically broadcast a sensor value, e.g. the temperature or the GPS location, to make it available to all nearby devices.
In the following example, the values between 0 and 255 are broadcasted incrementally with a new value every 5 seconds.