Silicon Labs Bluetooth® Mesh C Application Developer’s Guide for SDK v2.x and Higher#

NOTE: This section replaces UG295: Silicon Labs Bluetooth® Mesh C Application Developer’s Guide for SDK v2.x and Higher for Simplicity SDK 2024.12.2 and up. Further updates to this application note will be provided here.

These pages are a C developer’s guide for the Silicon Labs Bluetooth Mesh stack. It covers various aspects of development and is an important reference for anyone developing in C for Wireless Gecko products that are running the Bluetooth stack.

They are a companion to UG434: Silicon Labs Bluetooth C Application Developers Guide for SDK v3.x and Higher and contains content specific to mesh application development. The guide covers both Bluetooth Mesh stack architecture, application development flow, use and limitations of the MCU core and peripherals, stack configuration options, and the stack's resource usage. This version applies to the Silicon Labs Bluetooth Mesh SDK version 2.x and higher.

The purpose of the document is to capture and fill in the blanks between the Bluetooth Mesh Stack API reference, Gecko SDK API reference, and Wireless Gecko reference manuals, when developing Bluetooth Mesh applications for the Wireless Geckos. This document exposes details that will help developers make the most out of the available hardware resources.

• Application Development Flow discusses the application development flow.

• Project Structure reviews project structure.

• Bluetooth Mesh Stack Event Handling is an important piece for everyone developing with the Silicon Labs Bluetooth stack, as it explains how the application runs in sync with the stack in an event-based architecture.

• NVM Layout describes memory allocation for Bluetooth LE and mesh.

• Bluetooth Mesh Features reviews functionality provided by Bluetooth mesh features.

• Bluetooth Mesh Stacks and Wireless Gecko Configuration and Resources touches on the topics of peripherals and the chipset resources, covers what is reserved for the stack usage, how interrupts should be handled, and the stack’s memory footprint and available memory for the application. It also covers radio TX/RX monitoring.

About This Version#

The current version of Silicon Labs' Bluetooth Mesh SDK is 2.1.x. Currently supported compilers and IDE version are:

• IDE: Simplicity Studio 5.0.0 or newer.

• Compiler: IAR v8.50.9 and GCC 10.2.0.

Prerequisites#

This document assumes the current version of Silicon Labs’ Bluetooth SDK has been properly installed to the development machine (Windows, MAC OSX, or Linux), and that you are familiar with docs.silabs.com/btmesh/latest/btmesh-getting-started-overview/ and with the SDK’s examples. Also, you should have a basic understanding of Bluetooth technology. For more information, see UG103.14: Bluetooth Technology Fundamentals.