Decoding BLE Scan Results

[devnull]

I am having difficulty decoding the scan results from BLE devices.

I have the following interrupt to display the scan results:

Code: Select all

def bt_irq(event, data):
  if event == _IRQ_SCAN_RESULT:
    addr_type, addr, iscon, rssi, adv_data = data
    if iscon:
      print('type:{} addr:{} rssi:{} data:{}'.format(addr_type, ubinascii.hexlify(addr), rssi, ubinascii.hexlify(adv_data)))

bt.gap_scan(20000)

Code: Select all

type:1 addr:b'6b438955c14c' rssi:-59 data:b'02010613ff4c000c0e00fd3056fefd65505e5913768491'
type:0 addr:b'28f076526d9f' rssi:-59 data:b'0201060aff4c0010050b186d104c'
type:1 addr:b'6b438955c14c' rssi:-59 data:b'02010613ff4c000c0e00fd3056fefd65505e5913768491'
type:0 addr:b'28f076526d9f' rssi:-59 data:b'0201060aff4c0010050b186d104c'
type:1 addr:b'6b438955c14c' rssi:-63 data:b'02010613ff4c000c0e00fd3056fefd65505e5913768491'
type:0 addr:b'28f076526d9f' rssi:-64 data:b'0201060aff4c0010050b186d104c'
type:1 addr:b'6b438955c14c' rssi:-66 data:b'02010613ff4c000c0e00fd3056fefd65505e5913768491'

However none of the addresses (addr) appear to match the addresses that are discovered on my phone using BLE scanners such NRF Connect app.

Am I missing something ???

[jimmo]

However none of the addresses (addr) appear to match the addresses that are discovered on my phone using BLE scanners such NRF Connect app.

Are they byte-reversed? FYI, an earlier version of the PR did have the byte order reversed (it's a bit of a tradeoff here between consistency with other APIs and what naturally makes sense). The current version in master should match the "sticker order".

Do you have any devices with known addresses (i.e. mac address printed on a sticker) that you can scan for?

[devnull]

OK, managed to find a device with a mac address and the reported address appears to be correct.

But if I use a BLE scanner on my iphone the ID (which I assume is the mac address) is much longer i.e.

F5E3DC34-F500-3E17-OA49-F2A5EC0E66E2

I have managed to determine which device is my Beacon as the manufacturer data contains the AA20 service (reversed):

type:0 addr:b'cdd751150f7e' rssi:-52 data:b'(02)0106-(03)02[20aa]-(0e)ff001a0600350064cdd751150f7e'

You can see that the ID reported on iphone (F5E3DC34-F500-3E17-OA49-F2A5EC0E66E2) bears no resemblance to the device mac address (cdd751150f7e)

But how would i now connect to this device and read it's data that's transmitted once a second ??

[danielm]

The string is not BLE address but probably iBeacon UUID, which is encoded in the message.

Some resources on how to decode BLE advertisments:
https://www.silabs.com/community/wirele ... tisin-hGsf
https://www.blueupbeacons.com/docs/WorkshopBeacons.pdf

[pagano.paganino]

Try https://github.com/dmazzella/uble/blob/ ... til.py#L38

[devnull]

So, based on my experiments / tests, it appears that you cannot directly read a service by UUID, but need to send several commands and parse the results ??

For example if I want to read the battery level: 0x180f, then I would need to:

1) discover all services for a device
2) parse the services result looking for 0x180f
3) discover characteristics using the start and end handles (29,32) from service 0x180f.
4) get the property from the characteristics query (31)
5) read the value of property 31

Code: Select all

bt.BLE().gattc_discover_services(64)
>> services 64 [29] [32] UUID16(0x180f)
ble.bt.gattc_discover_characteristics(64,[29],[32])
  
>> chars 64 30 [31] 18 UUID16(0x2a19)
ble.bt.gattc_read(64,[31])

The square brackets are not part of the command, I just added them for clarity of the values I was looking for.

Is this the correct way of reading a UUID i.e the battery levels ??

[devnull]

Hi @jimmo - could you confirm that my 5 steps above are the correct way to read a value by it's UUID ??

Many Thanks

[jimmo]

Hi,

Yes, that is correct.

I haven't looked in detail, but I _think_ the handles are consistent, so if you already know the handle, then you can read/write directly from them immediately after a connect. But I'm not sure you can rely on that.

The BLE protocol does have support for looking up services and characteristics directly by UUID. But it really only simplifies the irq handler implementation (marginally).

[shenouda]

However none of the addresses (addr) appear to match the addresses that are discovered on my phone using BLE scanners such NRF Connect app.

Am I missing something ???

I am having the same issue, can't get past it,
like :
type:1 addr:b'790c96ba0d35' rssi:-38 data:b'1eff060001092002a7ad7a8ddbb036b1379963a399cc0731f7d591c43e87c9'
has address b'y\x0c\x96\xba\r5'
which reads on nRF connect app --> DC:FB:48:4D:62:A9
so how to get from this b'y\x0c\x96\xba\r5' to this DC:FB:48:4D:62:A9

are they the same ?? can't figure it out !!