The nRF5 SDK for Mesh is Nordic Semiconductor's implementation of the Bluetooth Mesh. It allows applications to use the features provided by the Bluetooth Mesh when running on Nordic's nRF5 Series chips.

The Bluetooth Mesh Profile Specification is developed and published by the Bluetooth SIG. It allows one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication. It uses BLE protocol to exchange messages between the nodes on the network. The nodes can communicate with each other as long as they are in direct radio range of each other or there are enough devices available that are capable of listening and forwarding these messages.

The end-user applications (such as Luminaire control) are defined with the help of client-server Mesh Models defined in the Mesh Model Specification.

You can find detailed information about Bluetooth Mesh in Bluetooth SIG's introduction to Bluetooth Mesh and the Bluetooth Mesh Networking Specifications.

Supported features

The nRF5 SDK for Mesh supports all the mandatory features of the Mesh Profile Specification. These mandatory features are qualified.

The following optional mesh features are supported by the nRF5 SDK for Mesh, but not qualified yet:

Provisioning over GATT bearer
GATT bearer
Config client
Mesh Proxy Service with Proxy Server
Low Power feature
Generic server and client models

For a quick demonstration of some of the basic concepts of the Bluetooth Mesh network using Nordic's nRF5 SDK for Mesh, see Quick start guide: running a first example.

Note: The nRF5 SDK for Mesh requires the nRF5 SDK to compile. See Installing the toolchain for more information.

Introduction to nRF5 SDK for Mesh

The overview section contains the following conceptual documentation:

Release Notes list all the changes made in the latest release.
Basic Bluetooth Mesh concepts describes the profile's relation to Bluetooth Low Energy, its network topology and relaying, as well as other key Bluetooth Mesh notions.
nRF5 SDK for Mesh architecture offers specific information about Nordic's implementation of the Bluetooth Mesh.
Compatibility lists SoCs, boards, and Soft Devices that can work with the mesh stack.
Interrupt priority levels describes the two interrupt priorities available for the mesh stack. Consider these interrupt priorities carefully in an application that uses nRF SDK for Mesh.
Low Power node feature describes concepts related to the Friendship protocol, which enables power-constrained devices to be part of a Mesh network.
Resource usage provides information about hardware resources required by the stack, including hardware peripherals, and RAM and flash usage.
Repository structure lists the folder structure of the mesh stack repository.

Working with nRF5 SDK for Mesh

Once familiar with the Bluetooth Mesh concepts, see the following sections of the nRF5 SDK for Mesh documentation:

Getting started contains tutorials about how to perform common tasks such as installing toolchain, building the stack and examples, implementing DFU, and other.
Libraries describes libraries that implement common tasks in an application that uses nRF5 SDK for Mesh.
Examples includes nRF5 SDK for Mesh example applications.
API Reference contains the complete mesh stack API documentation.
Data structures lists data structures and data fields used by the APIs.

Note: If you've been using one of the previous versions of the nRF SDK for Mesh, check the Migration guide in the Getting Started section.

Reporting issues

We appreciate all bug reports and fixes. Please report all issues on DevZone and our technical support team will ensure they are tracked.