nRF52-based configurable iBeacon for running on ABSniffer USB 528 Dongle

This guide assumes you have already have the nRF SDK (version 14.2.0), the command-line tools and an ARM GCC toolchain installed on your machine. It's best to verify this by building one of the SDK samples first.

Create a file called CMakeEnv.cmake and add the paths to those tools. Example:

set(ARM_NONE_EABI_TOOLCHAIN_PATH "/Users/ahs/local/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2017-q4-major")
set(NRF5_SDK_PATH "/Users/ahs/local/nRF5_SDK_14.2.0_17b948a")
set(NRFJPROG "/Users/ahs/local/nRF5x-Command-Line-Tools_9_7_2_OSX/nrfjprog/nrfjprog")

Create the Makefiles, erase the flash.flash of SoftDevice

$ cmake -H. -B"build"
$ cmake --build build --target FLASH_ERASE
$ cmake --build build --target FLASH_SOFTDEVICE

Flash the SoftDevice (nRF BLE stack):

$ cmake --build build --target FLASH_SOFTDEVICE

Build and flash beacon firmware:

$ cmake --build build --target absniffer-ibeacon
$ cmake --build build --target FLASH_absniffer-ibeacon

When plugged in to a USB port, the device exposes a virtual serial port, over which it accepts commands. The serial port parameters are 115200/8-N-1. Commands are in textual form and terminated by line breaks.

The I command is used to retrieve the firmware version, MAC address and beacon identity of the device.

> I
< OK V1.0.0 ED:CB:9C:B8:60:4E CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC 1 1

The C command is used to set the advertising parameters for the iBeacon. The proximity UUID (16 bytes) is specified as a 32 character hex string. The major and minor values are given as integers.

> C AABBCCDDAABBCCDDAABBCCDDAABBCCDD 123 456
< OK

The configuration is stored persisently in flash memory.