dongle supporting Bluetooth 4.2

[ricc]

Hi,
is anybody aware of a USB HCI dongle that supports Bluetooth 4.2? Looks like all of them only supports up to 4.0. I am particularly interested in LE Data Packet Length Extension.

regards,
Riccardo 

[Matthias Ringwald]

Hi Riccardo

Good questions. All Bluetooth 4.0 are compliant with the 4.2 spec since all the interesting stuff is options, like LE Data Length Extension.

I'm not aware of an USB HCI dongle that supports LE Data Length Extension. In addition, I'm also not aware of any Dual Mode HCI chipsets with H4 interface either.

I've seen support for Data Length extension only on newer LE-only SoC, like the ones from TI, Nordic, or Dialog Semiconductor.

I think the Zephyr implementation for the nRF52 has support for LE Data Length extesions, so you might be able to use that with BTstack (or anything else).

I'll visit the Embedded World in Nuremberg on Wednesday week and will try to get some feedback on new chips from the obvious chipset vendors.

Best

 Matthias

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[Minjun XI]

There seems  to be no 4.2-compatible dongles on the market. However, there're several WiFi/BT dual-chip devices (USB or PCI-E or NGFF forms) on the market, for example: Intel 8260 AC, 726x AC, and several from Broadcom. 

The intel devices work  fine with Linux/Windows.

[Matthias Ringwald]

hi

I've been at the Embedded World Exhibition two weeks ago.

At the TI booth, I've asked for their Bluetooth 5 plans for their CC256x series. Unfortunately, the answer was "it is in maintenance mode". So, nothing to expect there. TI seems to focus purely on their CC254x BLE Single-Mode chipsets that already support some BLE 5 features. Again, unfortunately, there's no firmware for those to use them as a Bluetooth 5 HCI module via H4 or H5.

In contrast, Cypress, who bought the Bluetooth / Wifi division of Broadcom last year, presented a new Dual Mode Bluetooth + Wifi chipset. It seems to be available to early adopters and should be generally available later this year. I wasn't able to get a handout or so to check what features are actually implemented. I think I remember that it supports the faster 2 mbps mode for BLE. I'll try to get a dev kit to play with it.

The other big one, CSR, has been acquired by Qualcomm. I did check with their European distributor but I wasn't able find get much information about new chipsets. So, Qualcomm might surprise us eventually :)

Best

 Matthias

[ricc]

Hi Matthias,

I was as well at Embedded World :)

I saw that also ON Semiconductor released a Bluetooth 5 chipset. There is also a dev kit available http://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/evalBoard.do?id=RSL10-001GEVB 

regards,

Riccardo

[Matthias Ringwald]

Hi Riccardo

Weird, I didn't see you :0)

Thanks for the link to the ON Semi chipset. Did you see if they have an HCI firmware?

There are many more BLE SoCs (e.g. SiLabs who bought BlueGiga a while ago), but usually they don't provide an HCI interface and cannot be used with BTstack.

Aside from Nordic's nRF5 series that have a custom HCI firmware, there's also the Dialog Semiconductor DA14581that can be loaded with an HCI firmware. In fact, I just got the OK from them to host this firmware together with BTstack and hope to support this chipset directly soon.

Best

 Matthias

[ricc]

Hi Mathias,

It looks like it supports HCI firmware, but I am not sure. You can find a lot of documentation in the dev tools http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/RSL10%20DEVELOPMENT%20TOOLS.ZIP 

riccardo

[Matthias Ringwald]

Hi Riccardo

I did download the dev tools, but was to lazy to start up a virtual machine with Windows just to read some documentation.

Anyway, in one of the doc files, they write that HCI can be accessed directly and the HCI via UART/H4 is considered a valid use case, but I didn't see/find an project or a binary file that would implement this.

Implementing HCI transport isn't too hard, but I'd rather have the Bluetooth chip vendor do it for me. :) I'll keep in mind that it's at least possible to do so.

Best regards

 Matthias