FAQ about Fermion: BLE Sensor Beacon【TEL0168】

Q1: What can BLE Sensor Beacon be used for?

A1:  In previous embedded development, sensors often required cables to be connected to the controller. If you want to place sensors in locations that are a little far apart, the wiring becomes a little more difficult.
With BLE Sensor Beacon, you can think of it as a small controller that can connect numerical/analogue/I2C sensors. And connect it with your Bluetooth mobile phone or Bluetooth controller (e.g. ESP32) to design your own sensor node.

Q2: What sensors is BLE Sensor Beacon compatible with?

A2: Almost any digital, analogue sensor with an output of 0~3.3V. As well as some I2C sensors.

Q3: Which GPIO is best to connect my analogue sensors to?

A3:  We recommend you to connect to GPIO6, because the GPIO of BLE Sensor Beacon chip cannot exceed 1.6V if it is set to ADC mode, so if your analogue sensor output exceeds 1.6V, we recommend you to connect your sensor to GPIO6 which has the built-in voltage divider resistor.

Q4: If I use an I2C sensor, do I need an external pull-up resistor?

A4: If you are using DFRobot's Gravity or Fermion series sensors. The I2C pull-up resistors for our sensors are built in on the sensors.
If you are using an I2C sensor from another manufacturer and do not have a pull-up resistor. You can solder the TEL0168's on-board pads to connect the TEL0168's on-board pull-up resistors.

Q5: How do I test I2C sensor compatibility?

A5: Unfortunately, given the small RAM of the BLE Sensor Beacon's on-board MCU, the I2C sensor does not support the "Run in RAM" test and can only be "Burned".
We recommend you to double check the I2C communication configuration before "Burn", as this step is irreversible.

We have designed our own .cfg configuration file for some Fermion sensors. You can download it from our Github repo.
If you need to integrate an I2C sensor in large quantities, you can raise an issue in this Github repo and we will evaluate your needs in a timely manner.

BLE Sensor Beacon Github repo:

https://github.com/DFRobot/DFRobot_FermionBLE

Q6: How do I reset the Beacon for a second "Run in RAM" test when I am doing a "Run in RAM" test?

A6: Currently, only digital/analog sensors support the "Run in RAM" test. When you are done with the test, you need to completely cut off the Beacon's power (both VCC and coin cell) to reset the Beacon.

Note:

If you are using the Arduino IDE with the esp32 BLE sample code which we posted in our wiki .
We recommend that you roll back the SDK to a Stable version instead of the Development version. This is because as of 2024.3.15, the development version of the SDK has a string matching error when compiling BLE related code, which means the ESP32-C6/H2 does not support our sample code in wiki now.

If you have other questions, just feel free to post them in our forum for consultation. We will reply them as soon as possible and improve the product FAQ gradually.