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NimBLE-Arduino

A fork of the NimBLE stack refactored for compilation in the Arduino IDE.

As of release 1.4.0 Nordic Semiconductor nRF51 and nRF52 series devices are now supported

Supported MCU's

  • Espressif: ESP32, ESP32C3, ESP32S3
  • Nordic: nRF51, nRF52 series (Requires using n-able arduino core)

Note for ESP-IDF users: This repo will not compile correctly in ESP-IDF. An ESP-IDF component version of this library can be found here.

This library significantly reduces resource usage and improves performance for ESP32 BLE applications as compared with the bluedroid based library. The goal is to maintain, as much as reasonable, compatibility with the original library but refactored to use the NimBLE stack. In addition, this library will be more actively developed and maintained to provide improved capabilities and stability over the original.

For Nordic devices, this library provides access to a completely open source and configurable BLE stack. No softdevice to work around, allowing for full debugging and resource management, continuous updates, with a cross platform API.

Arduino installation

Arduino Library manager: Go to sketch -> Include Library -> Manage Libraries, search for NimBLE and install.

Alternatively: Download as .zip and extract to Arduino/libraries folder, or in Arduino IDE from Sketch menu -> Include library -> Add .Zip library.

#include "NimBLEDevice.h" at the beginning of your sketch.

Platformio installation

  • Open platformio.ini, a project configuration file located in the root of PlatformIO project.
  • Add the following line to the lib_deps option of [env:] section:
h2zero/NimBLE-Arduino@^1.4.0
  • Build a project, PlatformIO will automatically install dependencies.

Using

This library is intended to be compatible with the original ESP32 BLE functions and types with minor changes.

If you have not used the original Bluedroid library please refer to the New user guide.

If you are familiar with the original library, see: The migration guide for details about breaking changes and migration.

Also see Improvements_and_updates for information about non-breaking changes.

Full API documentation and class list can be found here.

For added performance and optimizations see Usage tips.

Check the Refactored_original_examples in the examples folder for highlights of the differences with the original library.

More advanced examples highlighting many available features are in examples/ NimBLE_Server, NimBLE_Client.

Beacon examples provided by @beegee-tokyo are in examples/ BLE_Beacon_Scanner, BLE_EddystoneTLM_Beacon, BLE_EddystoneURL_Beacon.

Change the settings in the src/nimconfig.h file to customize NimBLE to your project, such as increasing max connections, default is 3, absolute maximum connections is 9.

Development Status

This Library is tracking the esp-nimble repo, nimble-1.4.0-idf branch, currently @3df0d20.

Also tracking the NimBLE related changes in ESP-IDF, master branch, currently @95db4bb.

Acknowledgments