Ruvitag Gateaway as BLE beacon

Ruuvi products 🇬🇧 Ruuvi Gateway router
1

Hey,

Are there simple or even complex ways of using the Gateaway purely because of it’s advanced antenna for collecting bluetooth data from tags and then further exporting this data to another device with uart or ble?

Can I make Gateaway also BLE beacon? Or uart dump the data somehow so that most of the firmware stays untouched?

Thanks

2

Hi @Aaroe,

Thanks for reaching out! Here is a breakdown of what is possible with the Ruuvi Gateway’s hardware architecture and firmware:

1. Acting as a BLE Beacon / Relaying via BLE

  • This is not possible with the stock firmware.

  • The BLE stack on the main ESP32 is completely disabled.

  • The nRF52 radio co-processor runs dedicated scanner firmware that operates strictly as a passive receiver/listener across advertising channels. It does not support transmission or active beacon roles.

2. Streaming Raw Packet Dumps over UART

  • While the gateway features a UART output, it is used strictly for diagnostic logs rather than raw data ingestion/streaming.

  • The main limitation is bandwidth:

    • Ruuvi Gateway can track up to 100 active BLE tags simultaneously.

    • Each BLE packet can carry up to 48 bytes, and sensors can advertise up to 7 times per second.

    • Formatting raw packets as ASCII/hex strings over serial at high traffic requires a sustained throughput of around 670+ kbps ($100 \text{ sensors} \times 7 \text{ msgs/s} \times 48 \text{ bytes} \times 2 \text{ hex characters} \times 10 \text{ bits/byte}$ framing).

    • The diagnostic UART operates at a fixed baud rate of 115,200 baud, which would immediately overflow task queues and drop packets under moderate-to-heavy radio traffic. This is why raw packet dumping is not supported in the logging stream.

3. The Recommended Solution: Local MQTT Stream

If your goal is to leverage the gateway’s advanced antenna and RF front-end to feed raw data into another local device without modifying firmware, local MQTT is the only reliable option:

  • Why not HTTP? The gateway only sends HTTP POST batches at a fixed interval, which drops/skips rapid successive BLE packets from fast-advertising tags.

  • Why MQTT? When streaming over MQTT (or MQTTS), the gateway immediately dispatches captured BLE advertisements over a persistent TCP/IP socket (Ethernet or Wi-Fi) with near-zero latency and no dropped frames.

You can point the gateway’s Custom MQTT directly to a local MQTT broker (such as Mosquitto running on a Raspberry Pi, PC, or server on your LAN). This keeps the gateway on 100% stock firmware, maintains full OTA update capability, and delivers the full radio throughput of every detected tag.

Feel free to ask if you have any further questions or share more details about your specific setup and requirements so we can help suggest the best possible solution for your project!

Best regards,
Alexey

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