Mesh networking with Bluetooth has a bright future. By taking advantage of existing lighting systems you open the door to huge added value possibilities, both for your business and its customers.

While mesh networking is nothing new, it is only now starting to be adopted in industrial and commercial environments. Bluetooth Mesh offers a low power mesh network with the potential to deliver many and varied added value services.

Some people in the industry view mesh networking as the next ‘shiny object’, nothing more than another excuse to raise prices. But mesh does deliver significant benefits over star or peer-to-peer networks and looks set to make a real impact on the industrial IoT and in the smart home in the years to come.

The reason is simple: mesh networks solve a specific problem. A conventional wireless router offers limited coverage if you can’t hardwire additional access points to it, which drives up complexity and expense in large spaces such an office building. On the other hand, mesh networks bring wireless connectivity to such a space far more simply than ever before.

The outdoor sensor unit(s) for automatic home or building HVAC systems provide outdoor data from one or multiple bearings (North, East, West, South) to a master actuator. This can be one or all of the following data:​

  • Outdoor air quality (OAQ according to the Environmental Protection Agency)​
  • Temperature and relative humidity (degrees, percentage)​​
  • Light/Sun (lux)​​
  • Barometric pressure (mbar)​​
Resources
 
Where can I find the books that Alan wrote for the workshop
 
Where can I buy the mesh kit?
The CYBT-213043-MESH is available from Mouser. You may also want to get the CY5670 Bluetooth CySmart dongle.
Where can I buy the Bluetooth modules that are on the kits?
The module is called CYBT-213043-02 and it is available from Mouser. Cypress offers many different modules and a quick search on Mouser for “cypress Bluetooth module” will reveal them all.