ESP 32 BLE notify on change does not notify

Hi
I was able to continuously notify if a Button was pressed or not on my firebeetle esp32 to nrfconnect. Now if I only want to notify when the button state has changed (to save battery) nrfconnect does not automatically detect the change (if I click on the arrow down then I see the change but I does not update itself) and also Droidscript does not see the change (it sees the change when I notify continuously). Serial monitor though shows the change. Why is that? (sorry for my bad english). Here is the code:


#include <BLEDevice.h>
#include <BLEServer.h>
#include <BLEUtils.h>
#include <BLE2902.h>

BLEServer* pServer = NULL;
BLECharacteristic* pCharacteristic = NULL;
bool deviceConnected = false;
bool oldDeviceConnected = false;
uint32_t value = 0;
 boolean oldState = LOW;
// constants won't change. They're used here to set pin numbers:
const int BUTTON_PIN = 27;       // the number of the pushbutton pin

// Variables will change:

int currentState;                // the current reading from the input pin

// See the following for generating UUIDs:
// https://www.uuidgenerator.net/

#define SERVICE_UUID         "4fdf794f-74dd-49be-a7fb-72c4236aa9b1"
#define CHARACTERISTIC_UUID "84017151-f16e-4206-a8a0-5e910f805200"


class MyServerCallbacks: public BLEServerCallbacks {
    void onConnect(BLEServer* pServer) {
      deviceConnected = true;
      BLEDevice::startAdvertising();
    };

    void onDisconnect(BLEServer* pServer) {
      deviceConnected = false;
    }
};

void setup() {
  //setCpuFrequencyMhz(80);
  Serial.begin(115200);

  // Create the BLE Device
  BLEDevice::init("ESP32");

  // Create the BLE Server
  pServer = BLEDevice::createServer();
  pServer->setCallbacks(new MyServerCallbacks());

  // Create the BLE Service
  BLEService *pService = pServer->createService(SERVICE_UUID);

  // Create a BLE Characteristic
  pCharacteristic = pService->createCharacteristic(
                      CHARACTERISTIC_UUID,
                      BLECharacteristic::PROPERTY_READ   |
                      BLECharacteristic::PROPERTY_WRITE  |
                      BLECharacteristic::PROPERTY_NOTIFY |
                      BLECharacteristic::PROPERTY_INDICATE
                    );

  // https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/gatt/viewer?attributeXmlFile=org.bluetooth.descriptor.gatt.client_characteristic_configuration.xml
  // Create a BLE Descriptor
  pCharacteristic->addDescriptor(new BLE2902());

  // Start the service
  pService->start();

  // Start advertising
  BLEAdvertising *pAdvertising = BLEDevice::getAdvertising();
  pAdvertising->addServiceUUID(SERVICE_UUID);
  pAdvertising->setScanResponse(false);
  pAdvertising->setMinPreferred(0x0);  // set value to 0x00 to not advertise this parameter
  BLEDevice::startAdvertising();
  Serial.println("Waiting a client connection to notify...");
  pinMode(BUTTON_PIN, INPUT);
}

void loop() {

boolean newState = digitalRead(BUTTON_PIN);

  if (deviceConnected) {
    if (newState != oldState) {
      if (newState == LOW) {
        value=0;
      }
      else {
        value=1;
      }
      Serial.println(value);
      pCharacteristic->setValue((uint8_t*)&value, 4);
      pCharacteristic->notify();
      delay(10);
      
    }
    oldState = newState;
    delay(50);
  }
}

Here is the loop that works when the state of the button is notified continuously:

void loop() {
  currentState = digitalRead(BUTTON_PIN);

  if(currentState == HIGH){ value=1;} else if(currentState == LOW){value=0;} 
  
    // notify changed value
    if (deviceConnected) {
        pCharacteristic->setValue((uint8_t*)&value, 4);
        pCharacteristic->notify();
        delay(10); // bluetooth stack will go into congestion, if too many packets are sent, in 6 hours test i was able to go as low as 3ms
    }
    delay(1000);
}

I cannot confirm what you see. I indeed get notifications to nrfConnect. The 01 changes to 00 when I press the button. I changed the button to INPUT_PULLUP and switch pin27 to ground.

Do you have your settings so the arrows look like this

Thx very much. I updated nrfconnect and now it seems to work. What puzzles me is that in nrf connect service and characteristics uids are different as I set them in arduino code (here: 00001700-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb and 00001a00-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb - I set them like they show up on your screenshot) - that was also the reason droidscript could not read the values. But it works now :slight_smile: