Overview

The most common way to achieve two-way communication in Bluetooth Low Energy is to use connections. In addition, a connection grants you benefits like higher data throughput, mechanisms to handle packet loss, and added security.

When you enter a connection in Bluetooth LE, a set of connection parameters are revealed. For a simple application, the default connection parameters may work perfectly fine, but you can also tweak these parameters to best suit your application, to give you the lowest power usage, or to achieve the throughput that you need. In this lesson, we will look into what these parameters do, and how you can adjust them. We will only cover connections from a peripheral point of view, and we will look into what that means, and what limitations it has.

In the exercise section of this lesson, we will establish a bi-directional communication between your Nordic device and your smartphone. Then we will practice reading the connection parameters and requesting different ones from the central. Lastly, we will practice how to request a different PHY mode during the connection establishment.

Objectives

• Understand the connection process in Bluetooth LE
• Learn about the different connection parameters and what they do
• Learn how to change connection parameters
• Practice through hands-on exercises how to establish a connection and modify various connection parameters