Does the bluetooth 5.0 support multicast (Simplification of multi-link)?
I need to be connected (transmit) to two devices at the same time via bluetooth, is it possible?
As far as I know, since BT 3.1 it is possible to multicast to 2 devices, but sadly not more than that.
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So I have a Linux with old BT2.0. I want to use it as iBeacon. Energy consumption is not my concern; the only one is API. Is it possible?
Unfortunately no. iBeacon and beacons in general depend on BLE advertisements, and this was introduced as part of the Bluetooth Low Energy features that are part of BT4.0. The only way around this is if you added a BT4.0 HCI dongle or a Bluetooth v4.0 device to your Linux machine.
You can find more information here:-
5 Things to Know about Beacon Technology
BLE Beacon Technology Made Simple
What are BLE Beacons
Pluggable USB Bluetooth v4.0 Dongle
Best Bluetooth Adapters in 2020
You will also need a relatively new version of Linux in order to have BlueZ support for BLE. Ideally your laptop should be on Linux v4.4 or later, but theoretically this should work from Linux v3.13 onwards. More details are found here:-
Bluetooth Linux Kernel Supported Versions
Checking BLE Capability on Linux
As stated in the title, can both be ran simultaneously or is a second adapter required? For example, can one adapter run both BLE and BT classic at the same time - the BLE beacon broadcasts the MAC for opportunistic clients to connect to using RFCOMM.
If you are using a common CSR 4.0 Dongle or Ampac AP6212 (which purportedly uses the same Broadcom chip as the RPI3) then this is possible - they are "dual-stack".
Given this, the typical USB CSR chips have a hard limit of two connected RFCOMM clients and the Ampac, 8 or maybe more (tested for sure 8).
I'm planning to replace the Beacon tag of my Bluetooth (BLE)-based localization System with a smartwatch. Therefore, the smartwatch has to be able to advertise bluetooth signals. However I can't find any information about smartwatches using BLE advertising methods. I actually don't want to use an additional smartphone which would be able to advertise. I already found that the iWatch and the Moto 360 are probably not able to advertise.
Does anyone know if there's (or will be) a smartwatch available that is able to advertise BLE signals?
Thanks a lot!
el Baum
Ok, this is not possible for Sony Smartwatch atleast. This is because in order to be able to broadcast a BLE advertisement of your choosing, any given Android device has to be able to support BluetoothAdapter.isMultipleAdvertisementSupported(). Unfortunately, this feature is not available on most Android Wear devices.
If your Android device does support multiple advertisement, then you can create an advertisement packet and use the BluetoothLeAdvertiser object to start advertising.
I've a working version of a Raspberry Pi with a Bluetooth 4.0 (CSR) dongle that detects iBeacons (estimote) proximity using latest BlueZ.
It's working great but I don't know if I need a BT 4.0 capable device, or I can detect iBeacons with an older BT 2.0 dongle.
Does anybody have the answer or a pointer where I can get more info?
Yes, you need a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle to detect iBeacons, because they are based on Bluetooth Low Energy, aka Bluetooth LE, which wasn't released until the 4.0 Bluetooth spec.
One major drawback that always made me reluctant to using Bluetooth in apps was the battery drainage factor. With Bluetooth 4.0 and the low-energy hype, I've started to change my position. But after reading up on it more carefully, I've gotten the understanding that smartphones currently delivered with Bluetooth 4.0 run a so called dual-mode, implementing Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities ontop of a regular Bluetooth controller. This would mean that the battery drainage the Bluetooth controller would have on the device won't change much with Bluetooth 4.0 (note: I'm not interested in data transfer, just idle/scan).
My question:
Will a Bluetooth 4.0 supported smartphone be able to broadcast its device name and scan for other devices more energy efficiently than predecessing Bluetooth supported models?
If you are looking only for BT LE functionality, BT 4.0 will reduce battery drainage but as on smartphones they support both classic and LE, they will consume more battery for sure