{"id":952,"date":"2018-08-22T23:39:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T13:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/?p=952"},"modified":"2018-08-28T15:08:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T05:08:43","slug":"the-question-why-cc2640s1-ble-4-2-instead-of-ble-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/2018\/08\/22\/the-question-why-cc2640s1-ble-4-2-instead-of-ble-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Question &#8211; Why CC2640S1 BLE 4.2 instead of BLE 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Background<\/p>\n<p>A few people are looking at me and asking the question &#8211; why are we still developing with BLE 4.2 instead of BLE 5 for our new small low power sensors. After all, we all want mesh, we all want longer range, we all want the latest tech &#8230;&#8230; or do we<\/p>\n<p>The Answer (at the time of writing this post)<\/p>\n<p>There are a number of factors to consider<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Price &#8211; last we checked the CC2640S1 module costs under US$5 (100 off price) &#8211; yup, until we see a BLE 5 module at the same price point with ceramic antenna or ipx connector option, this point is hard to beat for a small low power sensor<\/li>\n<li>Range &#8211; 50m outdoors is enough in most cases, lets talk about sub 1G for longer range and getting though obstructions. That better range for BLE5 comes at a cost, its a lower data rate, the TX time is longer, that&#8217;s more power being consumed. And then you still have the penetration issues at 2.4G<\/li>\n<li>Power &#8211; Mesh doesn&#8217;t come free when it comes to power consumption, so its power wiring for Relay Nodes \/ Friend Nodes, hmmm, not very different to a gateway<\/li>\n<li>Phones and Tablets &#8211; I can wander into BigW (aka local dept. store) today and get a fairly decent phone with bluetooth 4.2 with BLE supported, not locked to a carrier &#8211; for about two hundred bucks, if you can do that for BLE 5 please let me know (update, I dropped my old phone in the drink, $80 at Coles prepaid with BLE 4.2)<\/li>\n<li>Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Ethernet WIFI BLE 4.2 (POE hat coming) &#8211; respectable gateway hardware at a reasonable price (there are even cellular hats)<\/li>\n<li>ESP32 Ethernet BLE 4.2 WIFI &#8211; realistic boards from reputable suppliers available for gateway hardware &#8211; such as Pycom GPy<\/li>\n<li>and other boards for gateways and sophisticated BLE 4.2 hardware such as mediaTek MT7697 &#8230;&#8230;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ll agree, the new BLE 5 hardware from Nordic and TI looks good, <strong>and there is no denying that longer advertising payload would enable encrypted data<\/strong>, and the idea of making lights etc BLE 5 relays \/ friends makes a lot of sense, <strong>but until the rest of the eco system catches up<\/strong>, and the BLE 5 module price comes down (yes, we see that happening already), we think BLE 4.2 for small low power sensors still has merit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Background A few people are looking at me and asking the question &#8211; why are we still developing with BLE 4.2 instead of BLE 5 for our new small low power sensors. After all, we all want mesh, we &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/2018\/08\/22\/the-question-why-cc2640s1-ble-4-2-instead-of-ble-5\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7DDag-fm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/furzy.com\/mikesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}