Not an engineer, I run a food plant. We’re getting quotes for vibration sensors on about 30 motors (conveyors, mixers, the big compressor). One vendor’s spec sheet says “Bluetooth 4.0”, the other says “BLE”. Their salespeople each say theirs is better. Both have a phone app. Is there an actual difference? And all our other data is in Hermetry, so can either of them send there, or am I stuck with two phone apps?
Isn’t BLE the newer one, like Bluetooth 5?
I think 4.0 is the version number and BLE is part of it? Not sure though.
Kevin is closer. Bluetooth 4.0 is the version of the spec that introduced Low Energy, so “BLE” is part of 4.0 and every version after it. A “Bluetooth 4.0” device can be classic Bluetooth, BLE, or both. For battery sensors it’s almost always BLE in practice. Ask the first vendor to confirm in writing.
The bigger question is your second one. Hermetry takes data over MQTT, HTTPS or LoRaWAN, so neither sensor talks to it directly. You’d need a gateway near the motors that listens to the sensors and reports each one as a child device in Hermetry (one gateway login, each sensor shows up as its own device with its own history and alarms). That only works if the vendor documents what the sensor sends: the advertising format, or the BLE characteristics to read. If the data only ever goes into their phone app and they won’t tell you the format, it’s not getting into Hermetry, whatever version it is.
So the question to send both vendors: “Is the data format documented so a third-party BLE gateway can read it?”
Sent that exact question. Vendor two sent a PDF with the advertising format the same day. Vendor one said “the app has a CSV export”. Ordering two from vendor two to test with a gateway.
Huh, I had that backwards then.
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