General • Simple BLE-based Wi-Fi Provisioning for Pico W

Hello,

I've been thinking about how to allow end users to set up Wi-Fi on the Pico W more easily.

While platforms like ESP32 and nRF offer official BLE-based Wi-Fi provisioning solutions, I couldn’t find anything similar for Raspberry Pi Pico W / Pico 2 W - so I built a simple proof-of-concept:

pico-ble-wifi-provisioning on GitHub

This demo lets you configure Wi-Fi credentials (SSID and password) over Bluetooth Low Energy, without hardcoding them into firmware. It also allows you to retrieve the assigned IP address.

It’s designed to work with generic BLE debugging apps like nRF Connect for Mobile, so no custom app is required to try it. I know - a dedicated provisioning app with a polished UI would be better in practice. But for now, I wanted something simple and testable with existing tools.

I'd love your feedback:

• Would this kind of provisioning be useful in your projects?
• How secure do you think BLE-based Wi-Fi provisioning needs to be?
• Have you tried other methods of provisioning Wi-Fi on Pico W that worked well?

I'm still learning BLE and BTstack - any suggestions, improvements, or ideas are welcome!

References:
nRF Wi-Fi Provisioner
ESP-IDF Programming Guide: Unified Provisioning

Statistics: Posted by 0yama — Sat Mar 29, 2025 9:42 am

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