Why is the data I am sending in an advertisement PDU seem to be received as converted ASCII data?

Answer

When sending extended or normal advertisements by setting AD Elements for scan or advertise response PDU’s using AT+AARA tag,<payload> or At+ASRA tag, <payload> the parser is expecting the payload to be a string enclosed by quotes.

However, how do you differentiate between a normal text string and a string of ASCII hex?

Is FF 0x46 0x46

Or is it

0xFF.

For example if the data added in the response packet is:

T+AARA tag, “BEEF”

The parser interprets this as a four byte string of 0x42, 0x45, 0x45, 0x46

If the command is changed to:

At+AARA tag, “\BE\EF” the parser would interpret this as a two byte string of 0xBE, 0xEF. The slash interprets the following two characters as ONE hex byte.