I need to get the friendly device name from a ble sensor. I want to find the device and tell the user they are connected to "My Home Sensor" for example. I can find the device, but I don't know how to find that data.
In regular bluetooth, I believe I can use BLUETOOTH_DEVICE_INFO or winsock.
Is there a bluetooth low energy equivalent to bluetooth's BLUETOOTH_DEVICE_INFO?
If possible, could you please provide an example for how to get the information (i.e. device name)?
I'm using Windows 8.1, c++ and visual studio 2013. I've been referencing windows dev docs, but I haven't found anything useful yet.
Thanks!
Assuming that you are able to get connected with the GATT Server, when you parse the GAP profile of the device, you will find an attribute for Device Name under Generic Access Profile (GAP).
This is a list of all the standard GATT Services and their UUIDs. UUID for GAP is 0x1800.
You can look for the list of all the standard Characteristics and their UUIDs. For the Device Name Characteristic, it is 0x2A00.
This explains that the Device Name characteristic is a part of the GAP.
Related
When connection to a custom BLE device from an app (android and ios) I have two options
a) first pair the device on the phone (like a headset or other devices) and then use it from the app to read and write data
b) without pairing on the phone, go inside the app, search for a device with a specific name or address, and just connect to it and read and write data.
when is one preferred over the other one ?
Its just when it needs to interact in the background or am I missing something?
The devices you see in your phones Bluetooth settings are Bluetooth Classic devices. There are some devices using both BLE and Bluetooth Classic which show up in the settings too, but the settings page is only for the Bluetooth Classic part of the device. Headphones for example are streaming music trough the Bluetooth Classic profile A2DP but might offer BLE services for additional features.
You always have to use a special app to communicate with the BLE part of a device. This could be an app provided by a manufacturer or a generic BLE scanner app such as nRF Connect.
As alexander.cpp already told you in his answer pairing (the exchange of keys) and bonding (saving of said keys) is not required for the communication with BLE devices and only needed if the device requires a secured connection.
Bonding (technically correct term for BLE, often called Pairing in non-technical speech) is mostly for security, we can send sensitive information because the receiver is verified and data is transferred in encrypted form.
Prefer to use bonding if the data is sensitive (means users feel uncomfortable if somebody they don't know receive their data). For example, I consider "current temperature = 25" as NOT sensitive. For detailed explanation, find "Bonding with a BLE device" in BLE guide by PunchThrough.
Also this is a good answer to a similar question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42916081/10380092.
Your second question about background - no, bonding is not related to interaction in background.
I am currently having some issues with connecting to my peripheral. The bluetooth module in our peripheral does not seem to be advertising a name initially. I've have found that once I connect to the peripheral for the first time it will update the name and my scanner is then able to see the correct name.
I have no understanding why this is the case. I have also tried it using the Swift app we are developing, as well as a range of Bluetooth scanners on iOS and Android so I do not believe that this is an OS or programming error on the scanner side.
Is there a specific parameter that should be set on the peripheral. As I am just the app developer I do not have very much understanding about how the module is handing the process.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Just to confirm the scanner does not see a name for the peripheral until it has connected once. After this it will start displaying the name. Once the peripherals name is changed the old name is still being displayed until I have connected to it once again.
To display the name of device you need to see in advertisementData Dictionary which contains several keys depending on your device, in callback of didDiscoverPeripheral from CentralManager.
- (void)centralManager:(CBCentralManager *)central didDiscoverPeripheral:(CBPeripheral *)peripheral advertisementData:(NSDictionary<NSString *, id> *)advertisementData RSSI:(NSNumber *)RSSI
You can look for key CBAdvertisementDataLocalNameKey.
If you do not see the name, you can make changes in your firmware to include a name in GATT characteristic .
You can use LightBlue app to verify once. This is a good app on app-store to test your BLE device.
I am looking for a way to scan a device I own and discover "what it can do".
In other words, I'd like to know if a device is able to describe the way you have to communicate with it in order to build some application around it.
In my case it is a simple Christmas light that I'd like to play with but this could be used in different situations.
For classic bluetooth (BR/EDR):
When scanning for bluetooth devices (Inquiry), the bluetooth device will send an inquiry response (if it wants to be discovered) and maybe also an extended inquiry response (EIR). This EIR may already contain a list of services, the devices supports. This is a very fast way to get a picture of a remote device.
Moreover, the service discovery protocol (SDP) gives more information on a device. This takes some more steps. In SDP two devices can exchange their capabilites in kind of ping pong process.
For BLE:
After connecting a BLE device usually a service discovery takes place. The BLE peripheral (e.g. headset or a light) reports its capabilities to the central (e.g. smart phone). Some of these services have predefines functionalities. Additionally, it is free to the manufacturer to add custom services.
I am using a generic BLE plugin for PhoneGap when developing a BLE enabled application. It gives me beacons identification and RSSI, but reading more advanced attributes like battery status or TX power require specific communication with a beacon, which is manufacture dependant as far as I know. Does anybody of you know, how to read for example the battery status from Stick'n'Find BLE beacons. So far I have been able to discover, that it's necessary to connect to the beacon and after it a characteristic has to be read. But here, I am lost.
Marek
You must use a manufacturer SDK to do this. One user reported:
I reached out to the manufacture and they have an SDK (and sample app), you have to sign up for a free account to get access: https://bluvision.com/developer/beeks-beacons-sdk/ http://bluvision.com/developer/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/09/Android-SDK.zip
See here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/26424648/1461050
Does anyone know how a bluetooth device could pick up the discoverable devices' device IDs in range?
I am ideally looking for the simplest solution that involves the smallest implimentation of the bluetooth protocols.
A starting point would be good, I just wish to create a device that can store all the device ids of nearby bluetooth devices with minimal power consumption, preferably just using radio frequencies and not SDP and whatever else.
If you can't help me with this, please can you help me find good reading material for low level bluetooth (step by step) communication. The reading online is so high level that I cant work out what is actually sent, when.
Laalto nailed the answer from the Bluetooth spec/stack POV, but your question implies your looking for a stand-alone Bluetooth device - not just a laptop app scanning surrounding devices.
I can only speak for the BT chips that the company I work for manufactures (Cambridge Silicon Radio - CSR) but our chips can do that pretty much out of the box. Our chips have an on-board Virtual Machine sandbox that allows access to the firmware functions and Bluetooth stack of the chip. You can easily write a C code app to run in the virtual machine sandbox, on chip, that periodically scans for discoverable devices around, grab their ids and then download them when connected via USB or Serial, or maybe over BT when a device connects to the listener directly.
www.csr.com and www.csrsupport.com for chips, dev-kits, design references, etc.. etc...
You probably want a module with the extra HW (UARTs, USB etc...) as well as just the chip but you could implement this with something the size of a BlueTooth USB or probably smaller.
It would really help to know more about what your trying to achieve, why you want something that just scans the surrounding bluetooth devices and how big the device needs to be.
Sorry if this sounds like advertising. For balance: Broadcom make BT chips too!
The Bluetooth specs from http://www.bluetooth.org are a good starting place for low-level information. You need an account to access the specs, but you can create one for free.
Basically what you need to do is to go into Inquiry mode periodically and grab the response packets as they arrive. The more time you spend in Inquiry mode, the more likely you will discover devices in range: discoverable devices enter the Inquiry Scan mode only relatively rarely; it takes some time (10.24s at least with older Bluetooth versions) to scan all the possible frequencies in the Inquiry/Inquiry Scan frequency hopping schemes. And even then you can have suboptimal radio conditions.
For implementation I suggest you at least start with existing Bluetooth libraries such as BlueZ and do not attempt to create your own from scratch.