Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Nordic also provides a Master Control Panel application for An‐
droid that includes some of the same functionality without any ad‐
ditional hardware requirements, though the standalone tool using the
PCA10000 supports a much larger command set at the time of this
writing.
If you are writing an application for an existing peripheral, you can also use the MCP
to quickly reverse-engineer BLE accessories, displaying their individual data structures
and config settings, and then access them in your mobile application using the discov‐
ered service and characteristic UUIDs.
The MCP talks to the PCA10000 using a special firmware image included with the tool's
installer. Using Nordic's nRFGo Studio (also available on Nordic's website after regis‐
tering your nRF51822-EK, per the note in
“Examples and Toolchains” on page 78
), you
can update the USB dongle to use this firmware image.
Once the PCA10000 has been updated with the appropriate firmware, you can open the
MCP and interact with your peripheral via an easy-to-navigate UI, which allows you to
perform almost any functionality of a normal central device. This includes bonding,
opening or closing a connection, reading and writing to GATT characteristics, etc.
Figure 6-1
shows the results of a single peripheral advertising itself.
Once you connect to the periperhal and send a service discovery request, you can see
the list of services and characteristics available on the device (as shown in
Figure 6-2
),
at which point you can read or write to them the same way you could with any regular
BLE central device.
You can update values by selecting an appropriate characteristic, modifying the value
in the Value textbox, and then clicking “Send update.” You can also retrieve the latest
value of any characteristic by selecting it and clicking the Read button, which can be
useful with characteristics for which notification or indication have not yet been en‐
abled.
