Assess ST95HF and ST25R95 for Bluetooth pairing and read NFC Tag URL

[sam_cheng]

Hi,

I am assessing to use ST95HF chip or ST25R95 chip for Bluetooth pairing (use NFC Data Exchange Format) application and reader mode of NFC Tag URL.

1. I would like to know if above two functions can work on the chip at the same time.
2. And does the software package contain Bluetooth pairing and read NFC Tag URL for reference?

• ST95HF
• ST25R95

Best regards,

Sam Cheng

.

[Brian TIDAL]

Hi,

If I have well understood (please confirm), you would like to use the ST25R95:

• in Card Emulation (CE) mode with a bluetooth pairing record
• in Reader/Writer (R/W) mode to read NDEF record.

The ST25R95 supports those 2 modes. For devices supporting R/W and CE modes, the RFAL firmware implements the following: during a discovery cycle, the device starts polling in R/W mode. Once the polling is completed (and no tag has been discovered), the device enters in Card Emulation mode for the remaining time of the discovery cycle.

For applications using the CE mode, ST25R3916 is recommended as it offers higher performances compared to the ST25R95. The ST25 Embedded library for the ST25R3916 includes a demo for Card Emulation mode with a Bluetooth record and a demo for NDEF read/write.

Regarding the ST25R95, the support of the Card Emulation code is only provided on request.

Rgds

BT

[sam_cheng]

Hi Brain,

Thank you for your response.

However, it seems to me that NFC application for classic Bluetooth pairing function should be Peer-to-Peer mode can exchange NDFE information between two NFC devices.

Therefore, the chip needs to store NDEF information for Bluetooth handover application (Bluetooth SIG called Secure Simple Pairing) in the chip non-volatile memory.

I would like to use the ST95HF or ST25R95 (finally choose one):

• in Peer-to-Peer mode with a classic Bluetooth pairing record
• in Reader/Writer (R/W) mode to read NDEF record.

Can the chips support two features working at the same time?

Is there STM32 reference code contain classic Bluetooth pairing and read NFC Tag URL for porting reference (target is STM32F0 MCU) ?

Best regards,

Sam Cheng

[Brian TIDAL]

Hi,

Peer-to-Peer is getting deprecated and if I am not wrong new Android devices will not support P2P any longer. So I would rather recommend to use CE and R/W modes. You will find an example of Bluetooth pairing record in CE mode inside the ST25 Embedded library for the St25R3916. If you want to use the CE mode on ST25R95, feel free to send me a private message to request the code. 

Rgds

BT

[sam_cheng]

Hi @Brian TIDAL ,

Thank you for your clarification. This is very helpful.

I have installed the STSW-ST25R-LIB library.

• Is the an example of Bluetooth pairing record in CE mode available in ST25NFC_Embedded_Lib_ST25R3916(B)_1.5.0\Middlewares\ST\NDEF\source\message folder "ndef_type_bluetooth.c" ?
• In addition, what do you think of ST95HF? Do you recommend ST95HF?

Best regards,

Sam Cheng

[Brian TIDAL]

Hi,

the bluetooth pairing demo is in Projects\STM32L476RG-Nucleo\Applications\X-NUCLEO-NFC06A1\pairing and in Projects\STM32L476RG-Nucleo\Applications\X-NUCLEO-NFC08A1\pairing. 

Since the CR95HF and the ST95HF has joined the ST25R family, ST25R95 is the part numbering (actually ST25R95-VMD5T is the full part number; the previous ST95HF-VMD5T/CR95HF-VMD5T part numbering is still available to avoid change of BOM for existing applications). ST25R95 has the HW support for CE mode (the code is provided on demand). The bluetooth pairing demo will need to be backported from ST25R3916(B) to ST25R95 and merged with the ndef R/W demo. This will require a little bit more effort that using ST25R3916(B) which already has those demos.

Rgds

BT

[sam_cheng]

Hi Brain,

Thank you for your response.

I would like to further evaluate ST25R95. Should I choose X-NUCLEO-NFC03A1 evaluation board?

If yes, can I use the  STM32F401 Nucleo / STM32F0  Nucleo / STM32G0  Nucleo boards with  X-NUCLEO-NFC03A1?

Best regards,

Sam Cheng

[Brian TIDAL · Accepted solution]

Hi,

 X-NUCLEO-NFC03A1 is the right board to be used for application development. X-CUBE-NFC3 FW package supports the NUCLEO-F401RE MCU board. I will send you in private the code to enable CE mode on top of X-CUBE-NFC3. The generic CE demo supports an URI record by default that can be easily overwritten by a pairing record as in the main.c from the pairing demo.

Rgds

BT