Enabling BLE workflow on Espressif ?

[Neradoc]

Do we want to implement BLE workflow on Espressif ?
It could be an alternative to web workflow or enabled by default, solving the problem of the creation of .env which otherwise requires serial access. And maybe it would be turned off if web workflow is enabled.

[dhalbert]

Assigning to 8.0.0 to make a decision one way or the other.

[ThomasAtBBTF]

For me, this is an "academic" discussion!
As long as BLE on ESP32(s3) is not working and developed as on the Adafruit ItsyBitsy nRF52840 (which is "out of stock"), I think you should work on getting _bleio and the other libs working as well as on the Nordic chip !

What is the use-case here and where is the customer benefit?
Who really can not connect a board to USB while developing code?
For the benefit of being able to "play" with the board via BLE ?

[dhalbert]

On second thought, I don't think we can do BLE workflow given #7170 :

This is about half done. The two remaining large pieces are adding GATT server support and bonding support. Unfortunately GATT server support probably needs NimBLE modifications to allow for adding servers, characteristics and descriptors after things are running. The SoftDevice can do this so we've assumed it in our APIs ability to just Service() at any point.

[dhalbert]

As long as BLE on ESP32(s3) is not working and developed as on the Adafruit ItsyBitsy nRF52840 (which is "out of stock"), I think you should work on getting _bleio and the other libs working as well as on the Nordic chip !

It's in stock at the moment: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4481

[ThomasAtBBTF]

Not everywhere !

[dhalbert]

This would be a lot of work - deferring past 8.0.0.

[ThomasAtBBTF]

Sad!

[tannewt]

It is something we want to do. Just not for 8.0.

[KarolDuzinkiewiczDAC]

@tannewt @dhalbert any ETA on this one in CircuitPython?