Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS)

Hello everyone!

We need to implement Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) in our nRF51 firmware so that the iOS application running in the background mode can receive notifications from nRF51.

By analyzing the ANCS example that comes with nRF5 SDK v12.3.0 (located at examples\ble_peripheral\ble_app_ancs_c) I noticed that, in addition to the declaration of ANCS service, it includes Peer Manager (used to control bonding, encryption, and pairing process) as well as Database Discovery (used for discovery of services and characteristics at the peer server) BLE libraries.

Given the fact that the size of our application is at the limit of the available code space, I wonder if we can get rid of the Peer Manager library (as it takes about 20KB of space and we don't need to protect the data and pair/bond with the iOS device) and still keep the full ANCS capabilities? Any ANCS guru that can help us with this?

Thanks in advance for your time and efforts.

Cheers!

Bojan.

0 user15146 over 4 years ago

Hi,

I could not find any mention of bonding/pairing, or security in the ANCS Specification , but I would have thought that the characteristics requires security. But you would either need to ask Apple or test it to be sure.
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0 user76830 over 4 years ago in reply to user15146

Hello, user15146.

Thanks for your prompt response.

The only suspicious thing I found in the ANCS Specification was that all three ANCS characteristics require authorization for access:

Not sure what kind of authorization they think of here. It could be that it is enough to call ble_ancs_c_notif_source_notif_enable() and ble_ancs_c_data_source_notif_enable() APIs in order to authorize. What do you think?

I will also double-check with Apple.

Regards,

Bojan.
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0 user15146 over 4 years ago in reply to user76830

Hi,

bojan said:
The only suspicious thing I found in the ANCS Specification was that all three ANCS characteristics require authorization for access:

Nicely spotted!

bojan said:
Not sure what kind of authorization they think of here. It could be that it is enough to call ble_ancs_c_notif_source_notif_enable() and ble_ancs_c_data_source_notif_enable() APIs in order to authorize. What do you think?

That could be, or that you need to allow some permission/authorization in a pop-up message in iOS when the device connects. Or perhaps they really mean authentication, and in that case you would likely need the Peer Manager

bojan said:
I will also double-check with Apple.

Let me know if you get a response
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