neopixel example using bluetooth

[rtsandiego]

Hi. I have an Itsybitsy board with nRF52 Bluetooth. I tried to run the peripheral "neopixel" example file. It compiles correctly and connects to the iPhone Connect app, but doesn't control the onboard Neopixel led (Pin 6). Any suggestions on how to enable the single onboard neopixel would be greatly appreciated.

Additionally, I would like to send commands from a connected Central Itsybitsy board (instead of the phone app) to multiple peripheral itsybitsy boards to control their embedded neopixel color. Is there an example file you could recommend I look at?

Thanks!

[adafruit_support_mike]

If you want microcontrollers to talk to each other, you almost certainly *don't* want to use any member of the Bluetooth family.

Not only do the BT protocols require a lot of code, they have no concept of peer-to-peer communication between devices. They're basically wireless replacments for a USB cable, with the same assumption of a powerful central device that talks to multiple peripherals, but the peripherals don't talk to each other any more than you'd want a USB mouse and keyboard to be able to write data directly to a USB hard drive.

For peer-to-peer communication, it's much better to use interfaces designed for that kind of use, like Wifi or packet radio.

In that realm, the ESP32 family works hard to be the dominant low-cost solution.

[rtsandiego]

Thanks Mike for the quick reply. My needs do not require Peer to Peer communication. Only a hub and spoke type of control if that is helpful.

I found a file called ItsyBitsyM4ONboard that demonstrates how to control the Adafruit Dot Star so I'm going to start from there. Again the thought is to have a Central hub send out commands to specific peripheral spokes, the hub telling each of the spokes what color and intensity. There's no need for the peripheral spokes to talk to each other.

Any suggestions would be helpful. If this is still best for an ESP32 let me know. Otherwise I will soldier on. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[rtsandiego]

Learning a lot with this project and can see what Mike was alluding to in his earlier post. There's a lot going on with the Bluetooth stack. For me, power consumption is a big part of the project. Not sure I want to give so much away for the RTOS.

I'll complete the project and then hook it up to my instruments and see if I can afford it. Otherwise I may "roll my own" and just use the physical layer of some radio. I did this before with Zigbee many moons ago. Perhaps there's a packet radio in my future..