Do you know if ble central.connect can handle the encryption bits from Just Works bonding? https://technotes.kynetics.com/2018/BLE_Pairing_and_bonding/#:~:text=in%20BLE%20legacy-,Pairing%20methods%3A,nonce%20to%20the%20initiating%20device I have this information from the user manual of my peripheral of interest: 6.2.2 Pairing/Bonding After connection, the collector should initiate pairing with the PERIPHERAL BLE. The PERIPHERAL BLE uses the Just Works pairing method with bonding support. Upon successful pairing, the collector should initiate bonding, and the PERIPHERAL BLE will save the long term bonding key associated with the collector. The PERIPHERAL BLE requires the collector to be bonded in order to encrypt the connection. When bonding is complete, the collector should encrypt the connection. If the PERIPHERAL BLE detects that the connection remains unencrypted after four seconds, it will send a slave security request to the collector. The collector should accept the request which will trigger the pairing or encryption sequence. If the connection remains unencrypted four seconds after the PERIPHERAL BLE sends the slave security request, the connection will be considered insecure and the PERIPHERAL BLE will close the connection. After the collector is bonded with the PERIPHERAL BLE, the collector should encrypt subsequent connections immediately. If the encryption process fails, it is likely that either the collector or PERIPHERAL BLE has deleted its bond key. When this occurs, the PERIPHERAL BLE will delete its bond key if present. It is recommended that the collector also delete its bond key if present. The subsequent connection will trigger the pairing process, a new bond will be created, and the collector will be able to encrypt the connection. Note: The PERIPHERAL BLE’s default security mode places further restrictions on bonding. See 6.3.1.3.2 for more information.

I will have a look at it tomorrow. I'm working on BLE right now anyway.

thanks, Florian. you're very helpful in all this!

I have in my to-do list to add a timeout to connecting. Even for non-encrypted devices it sometimes fails without any event from the lower layer.

yeah I've been using

with_timeout

and catching to implement that

I will look at the code tomorrow, but what happens if you use

connect --secure

?

same hang. it immediately finds a device matching DEV_NAME and then when it moves on to connect, hangs

Ok. I will look tomorrow what it does.

https://github.com/h2zero/NimBLE-Arduino/issues/588 Hello, the only thing you need to do for this is to enable bonding: NimBLEDevice::setSecurityAuth(true, false, true);

Hehe. I sent the same link to my work email a few minutes ago.

that might be when the ESP32 is acting as the server, not the client

Hmm. Didn't find any reference to

setSecurityAuth

, but that might be the Arduino wrapper.

another link I'm exploring https://lpccs-docs.renesas.com/Tutorial-DA145x-BLE-Security/ble_security_example_secure_connections.html

okay, I think I've got it. The

--secure

flag is what was needed. Additionally, my device has a 2-minute window exactly after inserting the batteries that it will attempt new connections

Nice.

ok, maybe not. I get /

Have a look here: https://github.com/toitware/toit-provision

👌🏻

I don't know (yet) if their approach is standard or just something that works with their app, but hopefully worth a look.