Connecting Multiple 'Student' Arduino Devices to one 'Teacher' Hub" - specifically looking into ESP32 vs nRF52840

Support Product Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a project where I need a Teacher device (Central) to maintain simultaneous connections with multiple Student devices (Peripherals) via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).

The Goal:

  • Reliability: The connection must be stable for data exchange.
  • Scalability: I need at least 2 student devices connected to the teacher board at once
  • Platform: I’m using the Arduino IDE for programming.

Current Research: I’ve looked into the ESP32 and the nRF52840 (Adafruit). From what I’ve gathered these are good options but are they reliable and durable? do they drain the battery of the product (if i will be using batttery)?

My Questions:

  • Between the ESP32 and nRF52840, which is more reliable for handling multiple active connections?
  • Are there specific libraries (like NimBLE for ESP32) that you would recommend for this?
  • Are there other boards I should consider for the “Teacher” hub that handle multi-device pairing more easily?
  • What would you suggest using?
  • Is there another bluetooth connection that I should try instead of these?

Thanks

2 Likes
2

Hi Tara,

Welcome to the forum!!

Before jumping into communications, and recommendations:

  • Will these devices be battery-powered and/or portable?
  • How much data will be exchanged? (Could you give an example of a payload being sent?)

With any microcontroller project, reliability is down to the implementation (or libraries used).
Generally Nordic products (nRF) are generally better for power consumption, but might be harder to program with.

ESPNOW is a straight-forward way to handle communications and will happily allow for many modules to communicate.

Liam

3

Hi Liam!

  1. My product will be portable, due to this it is most likely going to be battery-powered for ease of use but i am tossing between battery or power supplies.
  2. The data being exchanged would be relatively small (its essentially just the the exchange of notifying the teacher and having a timer, and the time displayed on both devices)
4

Hi! Both the ESP32 and nRF52840 can handle multiple BLE connections, but if stability and battery life matter, the nRF52840 is usually the better option. It’s designed mainly for BLE and tends to be more reliable with multiple devices connected at once. ESP32 works too (especially with NimBLE), but it generally uses more power. For a central ‘teacher’ device, I’d probably go with the nRF52840 unless you also need Wi-Fi or extra features.