4. Verify Your Advertiser

This section suggests some useful tools that can be used to verify that your SmartBond™ device is behaving as expected. It describes how to initialize the various tools and use them to verify the procedures described in previous sections of this document.

4.1. Advertised Data Over the Air

When the project starts running, the Bluetooth Low Energy device will be shown on the Bluetooth Low Energy scanner on your cell phone. In our case study (Android application), the following results were captured:

'Output 1'

Figure 9 Verifying the Bluetooth Low Energy Device Output Using a Scanner App

'Output 2'

Figure 10 Exploring the Various Services after Connecting to a Remote Peer

Note

When using iOS and, if the advertising name has been changed and you no longer want your device (for example, iPhone, iPad) to connect to it, you can make your device forget it. Follow the steps in the Apple Support Communities and your iPhone won’t remember your Bluetooth device. If you change your mind, don’t worry, you can pair the device as though it were new.

4.2. Initializing the SmartSnippets Toolbox

Another useful tool that can be used both for debugging and measurement purposes is the SmartSnippets Toolbox bundled with the SmartSnippets Studio. By oppenning the SmartSnippets Studio , on the the right upper corner you can see Board and select from the options here we use DA14531 (you can choose other options like DA14535/DA14533).

'Output 3'

Figure 11 Initializing the SmartSnippets Toolbox

4.2.1. Using the SmartSnippets Toolbox

We will use the power profiler to check that the advertising interval value is 687.5ms and what is the energy consumption of our device.

  1. Click on the Power Profiler button on the SmartSnippets ribbon.

'SmartSnippets Toolbox ribbon'

Figure 12 SmartSnippets Toolbox Ribbon

  1. Press the Initialize button. If the connection could be set, the Start button will be enabled. Press the Start button to start a measurement. When the measurements you wanted to collect have been collected, press the Stop button.

'Initialize Power Profiler'

Figure 13 Initialize Power Profiler

  1. In the Power Profiler tab, press Tools and choose the Add Time Marker button. This will allow you to insert a time marker at a specified time point.

'Adding a Time Marker'

Figure 14 Adding a Time Marker

  1. As can be seen in the figure we can measure the inter val between the two peaks of the advertisement by marking them and choosing measure option. Here the measure difference value is 692ms considering the defined value of 688ms. Choose the end of an advertising event as a first point and the end of the next advertising event as the next point. The Power Profiler will display the energy, average current and electric charge that was consumed by the device. It will also display the time interval between the two marks and the peak-to-peak current difference. Please be advised that these measurements serve as a first check, and more accurate measurements could be acquired by the use of specialized hardware equipment.

'Measuring the Advertising Interval'

Figure 15 Measuring the Advertising Interval

Note

The above measurements were taken on a DA14531 device configured to use Extended Sleep. To enable this you must set the app_default_sleep_mode variable in user_config.h to the value ARCH_EXT_SLEEP_ON and load the executable file to the SPI flash. For more details you can refer to UM-B-083: Section 3.4: SPI Flash Memory Example .