4 ms·

Features and Benefits of Bluetooth Mesh 1.1 for Wireless Mesh Networking

112 points by teleforce 3y ago

lioeters 3y ago
Connecting the dots from another article on HN front page today, about ESP32. ESP-BLE-MESH Architecture > Bluetooth® mesh networking enables many-to-many (m:m) device communications and is optimized for creating large-scale device networks. > Devices may relay data to other devices not in direct radio range of the originating device. In this way, mesh networks can span very large physical areas and contain large numbers of devices. It is ideally suited for building automation, sensor networks, and other IoT solutions where tens, hundreds, or thousands of devices need to reliably and securely communicate with one another. > Built on top of Zephyr Bluetooth Mesh stack, the ESP-BLE-MESH implementation supports device provisioning and node control. https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/api-guides/esp-ble-mesh/ble-mesh-index.html https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/...
- m-p-3 3y ago
  That seems something that briarproject.org could leverage for their bluetooth comms.
  - wslh 3y ago
    Is it possible to achieve something similar for iOS? I assume this API [1] is helpful or is there any limitation there? [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectivity https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectiv...
jillesvangurp 3y ago
We've been using some tracking hardware with firmware from a company called Wirepas that has implements mesh networking. They've been doing this at scale for quite some years. I their technology uses both wifi and bluetooth. They don't do hardware themselves and instead work with a large amount of OEMs. Cool company to check out and I absolutely love their website and approach to marketing. If you have a few minutes, check out their videos. They are hilarious. The attraction of their solution is that the devices can be wireless and don't require a lot of infrastructure. You basically just mount them to the wall or the ceiling. Battery life is pretty good as well depending how you set these devices up. Years typically. Installation cost and effort is one of the big hurdles for companies to take this stuff into use. So, interesting to see some standards for mesh networking emerging here.
- e12e 3y ago
  Did you buy any devices via? https://www.wirepas.com/partner-products/ https://www.wirepas.com/partner-products/?
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    No, one of our partners is a company called Bornemann and they are one of the OEMs listed there. So we've mostly worked with their devices and platform.
- farkanoid 3y ago
  Wirepas requested a meeting with us at our office several years ago. They were very polite, but in all honesty, we knew even less about implementing their product afterward, and felt as though they weren't really interested in working with /us/ at all. Most of our questions were about implementing their firmware in our hardware (which largely went unanswered), and most of their questions were focussed companies we have ties with, that they were interested in reaching but have so far been unsuccessful. I hope they're doing well as it was an interesting product.
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    They raised 22 million a few months ago. So, it looks like they are doing well. Might be worth reaching out again if that's still relevant to you. I've talked to a few of their people on a couple of occasions and they were pretty competent and pleasant to deal with.
thedougd 3y ago
I thought Bluetooth mesh would overtake the home automation world but it never landed. Any insight as to why? I suspect the standards body and licensing have something to do with it but maybe there are technical reasons.
- bipson 3y ago
  IIRC in its initial version it was never "mesh", but more like fixed multi-hop routes over one or two intermediate nodes (i.e. no route discovery)
  - dromtrund 3y ago
    This is true, but this was never really a problem for the adoption. Spec delays, no firmware upgrade support, and most importantly no proper backing by phone or gateway vendors. Thread and matter seem to have fumbled their opportunity though, so it might not be too late.
- jasonjayr 3y ago
  Looking at the landscape of products at the local Home Depot or Lowes, it seems like most offerings are Wifi Only, need internet access, and require use of some proprietary app. The cynic in me thinks this is by design to lock people in to needing additional services (aka revenue streams) I grabbed a bunch of very cheap (via aliexpress) zigbee based products, and have been amazed at how well they can work. I find myself wishing I could find more ZigBee based devices locally (US-Based, at common retailers) in order to more quickly implement and build up more automation.
  - xfalcox 3y ago
    Can you share some of those ZigBee products? I'm looking into getting started on that, but Costa has been holding me back.
    - SushiHippie 3y ago
      I can recommend to search through the homeassistant subreddit, thats often a good starting point at least https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/
luksamer 3y ago
[flagged]
- declaredapple 3y ago
  What type of bot even is this? It makes 2 words that make no sense? Even phi-2b could make better responses then this.
  - SushiHippie 3y ago
    It can also comment the wrong price https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38972341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38972341
declan_roberts 3y ago
I’d love to see some kind of passive M:M mesh networking technology picked up by iPhone. Sending a iMessage over an E2E mesh network, completely bypassing the internet and censorship devices.
- kaliqt 3y ago
  It just needs to be high power enough so the is high enough, allowing for less devices needed in the middle to form a circuit.
- lathiat 3y ago
  I remember something like this being a feature for the OLPC laptop using 802.11s: https://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mesh_Network_Details https://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mesh_Network_Details
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  Counter censorship via RF is dicey with something rolled out that pervasively. If you're gonna spin up meshtastic at a protest that's one thing, it'll be off everyone's radar. If you put a radio on every iPhone though, the powers that be will absolutely enact countermeasures. This leaves you two options, neither of which work: 1) make the signal hard to detect and jam/locate via modern EW techniques: spread spectrum (but not the kind lora uses) which is typically illegal already so the devices will never be certified to operate in any country 2) make detection/tracking a pain in the ass by using the existing 5G uplink band in a simplex fashion. This is a better option all round, jamming it results in killing everything and hunting down everyone with a phone is impractical. The issue is this is generally still illegal in a regulatory sense, though might be possible in at least some jurisdictions.
wslh 3y ago
ELI5: What is the benefit of using Bluetooth for Mesh instead of WiFi? Generally speaking? I assume one is about energy consumption. WiFi has more coverage, right?
- BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
  Assuming we're talking about IoT applications: Lower power (better battery life), less congestion on Wi-Fi channels, no fussing over IPv4/subnets/etc., smaller attack surface (it isn't a trojan horse to your LAN), simpler setup/enrollment procedure than dealing with WiFi authentication. Most of these things are true with Zigbee/Z-Wave/Thread too, with the exception of being able to use a smartphone to directly connect and manage devices.
esafak 3y ago
Mesh networking. Now there's a technology that went nowhere. I still struggle to share files wireless P2P, forget about running any actual apps like video chat. Is that even possible? Glad I got out of networking after school.
- ews 3y ago
  Meshtastic has been deployed and used several times, with high success.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Idk, I’ve got an old house with chickenwire in the walls. Off the shelf mesh routers have made my life better.
korginator 3y ago
I've done some work in this space and there are pros and cons. BLE gets very complicated quickly. The mesh idea itself is nice, since there's no pairing / setup time - your device can be mostly asleep, and it simply powers up, sends a few bytes quickly, and powers down - that's a common industrial sensing use case. However there are broader issues that are not adequately addressed - onboarding, key management, credential revocation and key rotation and so on. I've also done some work earlier on 802.15.4 based mesh networks, there are standards for access control, payload encryption, frame integrity and sequential freshness, but delivering complete working solutions still becomes a bespoke offering that needs a fair amount of work to get right. To see a broad adoption of these mesh standards we need to address the broader engineering, integration, deployment and operational issues.

112 points by teleforce 3y ago

Connecting the dots from another article on HN front page today, about ESP32. ESP-BLE-MESH Architecture > Bluetooth® mesh networking enables many-to-many (m:m) device communications and is optimized for creating large-scale device networks. > Devices may relay data to other devices not in direct radio range of the originating device. In this way, mesh networks can span very large physical areas and contain large numbers of devices. It is ideally suited for building automation, sensor networks, and other IoT solutions where tens, hundreds, or thousands of devices need to reliably and securely communicate with one another. > Built on top of Zephyr Bluetooth Mesh stack, the ESP-BLE-MESH implementation supports device provisioning and node control. https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/api-guides/esp-ble-mesh/ble-mesh-index.html https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/...

m-p-3 3y ago
That seems something that briarproject.org could leverage for their bluetooth comms.
- wslh 3y ago
  Is it possible to achieve something similar for iOS? I assume this API [1] is helpful or is there any limitation there? [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectivity https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectiv...

jillesvangurp 3y ago

We've been using some tracking hardware with firmware from a company called Wirepas that has implements mesh networking. They've been doing this at scale for quite some years. I their technology uses both wifi and bluetooth. They don't do hardware themselves and instead work with a large amount of OEMs. Cool company to check out and I absolutely love their website and approach to marketing. If you have a few minutes, check out their videos. They are hilarious. The attraction of their solution is that the devices can be wireless and don't require a lot of infrastructure. You basically just mount them to the wall or the ceiling. Battery life is pretty good as well depending how you set these devices up. Years typically. Installation cost and effort is one of the big hurdles for companies to take this stuff into use. So, interesting to see some standards for mesh networking emerging here.

e12e 3y ago
Did you buy any devices via? https://www.wirepas.com/partner-products/ https://www.wirepas.com/partner-products/?
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  No, one of our partners is a company called Bornemann and they are one of the OEMs listed there. So we've mostly worked with their devices and platform.
farkanoid 3y ago
Wirepas requested a meeting with us at our office several years ago. They were very polite, but in all honesty, we knew even less about implementing their product afterward, and felt as though they weren't really interested in working with /us/ at all. Most of our questions were about implementing their firmware in our hardware (which largely went unanswered), and most of their questions were focussed companies we have ties with, that they were interested in reaching but have so far been unsuccessful. I hope they're doing well as it was an interesting product.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  They raised 22 million a few months ago. So, it looks like they are doing well. Might be worth reaching out again if that's still relevant to you. I've talked to a few of their people on a couple of occasions and they were pretty competent and pleasant to deal with.

thedougd 3y ago

I thought Bluetooth mesh would overtake the home automation world but it never landed. Any insight as to why? I suspect the standards body and licensing have something to do with it but maybe there are technical reasons.

bipson 3y ago
IIRC in its initial version it was never "mesh", but more like fixed multi-hop routes over one or two intermediate nodes (i.e. no route discovery)
- dromtrund 3y ago
  This is true, but this was never really a problem for the adoption. Spec delays, no firmware upgrade support, and most importantly no proper backing by phone or gateway vendors. Thread and matter seem to have fumbled their opportunity though, so it might not be too late.
jasonjayr 3y ago
Looking at the landscape of products at the local Home Depot or Lowes, it seems like most offerings are Wifi Only, need internet access, and require use of some proprietary app. The cynic in me thinks this is by design to lock people in to needing additional services (aka revenue streams) I grabbed a bunch of very cheap (via aliexpress) zigbee based products, and have been amazed at how well they can work. I find myself wishing I could find more ZigBee based devices locally (US-Based, at common retailers) in order to more quickly implement and build up more automation.
- xfalcox 3y ago
  Can you share some of those ZigBee products? I'm looking into getting started on that, but Costa has been holding me back.
  - SushiHippie 3y ago
    I can recommend to search through the homeassistant subreddit, thats often a good starting point at least https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/

luksamer 3y ago

[flagged]

declaredapple 3y ago
What type of bot even is this? It makes 2 words that make no sense? Even phi-2b could make better responses then this.
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  It can also comment the wrong price https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38972341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38972341

declan_roberts 3y ago

I’d love to see some kind of passive M:M mesh networking technology picked up by iPhone. Sending a iMessage over an E2E mesh network, completely bypassing the internet and censorship devices.

kaliqt 3y ago
It just needs to be high power enough so the is high enough, allowing for less devices needed in the middle to form a circuit.
lathiat 3y ago
I remember something like this being a feature for the OLPC laptop using 802.11s: https://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mesh_Network_Details https://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mesh_Network_Details
AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
Counter censorship via RF is dicey with something rolled out that pervasively. If you're gonna spin up meshtastic at a protest that's one thing, it'll be off everyone's radar. If you put a radio on every iPhone though, the powers that be will absolutely enact countermeasures. This leaves you two options, neither of which work: 1) make the signal hard to detect and jam/locate via modern EW techniques: spread spectrum (but not the kind lora uses) which is typically illegal already so the devices will never be certified to operate in any country 2) make detection/tracking a pain in the ass by using the existing 5G uplink band in a simplex fashion. This is a better option all round, jamming it results in killing everything and hunting down everyone with a phone is impractical. The issue is this is generally still illegal in a regulatory sense, though might be possible in at least some jurisdictions.

wslh 3y ago

ELI5: What is the benefit of using Bluetooth for Mesh instead of WiFi? Generally speaking? I assume one is about energy consumption. WiFi has more coverage, right?

BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
Assuming we're talking about IoT applications: Lower power (better battery life), less congestion on Wi-Fi channels, no fussing over IPv4/subnets/etc., smaller attack surface (it isn't a trojan horse to your LAN), simpler setup/enrollment procedure than dealing with WiFi authentication. Most of these things are true with Zigbee/Z-Wave/Thread too, with the exception of being able to use a smartphone to directly connect and manage devices.

esafak 3y ago

Mesh networking. Now there's a technology that went nowhere. I still struggle to share files wireless P2P, forget about running any actual apps like video chat. Is that even possible? Glad I got out of networking after school.

ews 3y ago
Meshtastic has been deployed and used several times, with high success.
mattmaroon 3y ago
Idk, I’ve got an old house with chickenwire in the walls. Off the shelf mesh routers have made my life better.

korginator 3y ago

I've done some work in this space and there are pros and cons. BLE gets very complicated quickly. The mesh idea itself is nice, since there's no pairing / setup time - your device can be mostly asleep, and it simply powers up, sends a few bytes quickly, and powers down - that's a common industrial sensing use case. However there are broader issues that are not adequately addressed - onboarding, key management, credential revocation and key rotation and so on. I've also done some work earlier on 802.15.4 based mesh networks, there are standards for access control, payload encryption, frame integrity and sequential freshness, but delivering complete working solutions still becomes a bespoke offering that needs a fair amount of work to get right. To see a broad adoption of these mesh standards we need to address the broader engineering, integration, deployment and operational issues.