Best Practices for BLE Development

Practical tips for building reliable, power-efficient BLE devices. For foundational concepts, start with BLE Basics.

The tips below cover common pitfalls in power management, debugging, testing, and deployment—areas where small mistakes often cause big problems.

Keep Advertising Payloads Small

Every byte costs power. BLE advertisements allow up to 31 bytes, but that doesn’t mean you should use them all. Shorter payloads mean shorter transmit times and longer battery life.

Pack data efficiently. Use fixed-point integers instead of floats. Encode state as bit flags. Skip the device name if receivers don’t need it.

Choose Advertising Intervals Deliberately

Faster advertising means faster discovery but shorter battery life. Match the interval to your use case:

When in doubt, start with longer intervals and decrease only if discovery time is a problem.

Handle Radio Interference Gracefully

BLE shares the 2.4 GHz band with Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and microwave ovens. Interference is inevitable. Design for it.

Use random advertising delays to avoid repeated collisions with other devices. Implement retry logic for failed transmissions. If your device also uses Wi-Fi, schedule radio usage to avoid simultaneous transmission.

Use the Right Debugging Tools

BLE debugging typically requires two types of tools: a client emulator for interactive testing and a packet sniffer for protocol-level inspection.

Client emulators let you manually connect to your device, browse its GATT services, and read/write characteristics. They’re essential for verifying your device advertises correctly and that your GATT schema works as expected. Mobile apps like nRF Connect and LightBlue are popular choices, though switching between phone and computer slows you down. Browser-based tools like BleuIO Explorer offer a faster workflow—plug in a USB dongle, open Chrome, and start testing without installing anything.

Packet sniffers passively capture the raw BLE traffic between devices, letting you see exactly what’s happening on the air. When a connection fails intermittently or data arrives corrupted, a sniffer reveals problems your code can’t see: failed connection attempts, parameter negotiation failures, out-of-order packets, or timing violations.

When debugging with a sniffer, look for:

• Connection failures — repeated connection requests without responses
• Parameter mismatches — rejected connection parameter updates
• Missed packets — gaps in sequence numbers or unexpected retransmissions
• Timing issues — connection events arriving outside the expected window

Low-cost sniffers like the Nordic nRF Sniffer handle most development needs. For production debugging, commercial tools from Ellisys or Teledyne LeCroy capture all three advertising channels simultaneously.

Test on Multiple Devices and Platforms

BLE implementations vary across operating systems and chip manufacturers. A device that works perfectly with one Android phone may behave differently on iOS or with a different BLE stack.

Test with multiple phones, tablets, and gateways from different manufacturers. Pay attention to connection parameter negotiation, MTU sizes, and timing behavior. Interoperability issues often don’t appear until you test broadly.

Validate Power Consumption Continuously

A single misconfigured GPIO or forgotten debug log can double your power draw. Measure often.

Establish a power budget early. Profile your device in each operating mode: advertising, connected, sleeping. Use a current measurement tool (like Nordic’s Power Profiler Kit) to catch regressions early. Track power consumption over time—it’s easier to fix problems when you know exactly when they appeared.

Test with Real Hardware Early

Simulators and dev kits behave differently than production hardware. Power consumption, antenna performance, and RF behavior vary across boards and enclosures.

Build on your target hardware as early as possible. Measure actual current draw with a power profiler. Validate range in environments similar to deployment conditions.

Plan for Firmware Updates

Devices in the field need updates. Design for this from the start.

Reserve flash space for a bootloader and secondary image slot. Implement a reliable update mechanism (DFU over BLE or via network). Version your firmware and include the version in telemetry so you know what’s deployed.

Hubble-Specific Guidance

Building with Hubble Network? These resources cover implementation details:

• Device SDK Documentation - SDK configuration and API reference
• Integration Guides - End-to-end walkthroughs
• Cloud API Reference - Data retrieval and device management