Bluetooth Low Energy Receiver

As of 10/31/23, the previous BLE implementation has been updated, and improved to correct some of the issues in the previous BTLE app.

This BLE app has several features which I will highlight in a brief overview.

Main Menu:

This is the main view which provides the user with incoming packet entries captured by the BLE Scanning.

1. The BLE app upon entry will scan for only BLE advertisement packets, and report them on the screen. The Channel knob can be used to select which advertisement channel to listen on. There is an Auto feature which will switch channels randomly from Channel 37-39 every 100ms.
2. Once found the user can then select an individual MAC Address entry to pull up a more detailed view of most recently captured data packet from this MAC Address.
3. The Sort Knob will sort the list of MAC indices by either Ascending MAC Address, device name, number of hits, dB, or by most recently updated entry.
4. The Filter button allows the user to filter based on the hex data of each packet. It also allows for filtering based on the ASCII name of the device (if found). More on that below.
5. The Name toggle allows the user to toggle off and on name display, if there is a name associated with the device. Not all devices have a name string. This name string is being parse from the Shortened and Complete Local Name packet type. See BLE Spec for information on packet types.
6. The Log toggle allows BLE app to write all filtered packet data into SD card under /BLERX/Logs. Each log entry contains timestamp, packet type, length of the packet, MAC address, and packet data.
7. The Clear button allows the user to clear entries as they fill up the screen.
8. The Export CSV file allows the user to export the current list of packet entries into a csv style file. Upon resaving the file, the file will update the existing entries with new data, as well as append new entries to the existing file.
9. The Tx button allows the user to switch to the BLE Tx app. See BLETX for more information.

Packet Detail Menu:

This menu is a more single detailed view on a specific entry selected by the Main Menu. More specific packet information is laid out here such as:

1. The MAC Address
2. The PDU Type which displays the last received PDU packet type as noted here:

Type	Name	Description
00	ADV_IND	Scannable advertising indication for all devices
01	ADV_DIRECT_IND	Directed advertising to a specific device indicating that only that device can connect
02	ADV_NONCONN_IND	Advertising indication but not accepting connections or scans
03	SCAN_REQ	Sent by a device to receive more info from scannable advertisers
04	SCAN_RSP	Response to 03 containing more info
05	CONNECT_REQ	Sent to an advertiser to initiate a connection
06	ADV_SCAN_IND	Scannable advertising indication but not accepting connections
07	ADV_EXT_IND	BT 5.0, points to additional data on secondary channels
09	AUX_ADV_IND	BT 5.0, scannable advertising indication for all devices on secondary channels
0A	AUX_SCAN_REQ	BT 5.0, sent by a device to receive more info from scannable advertisers on secondary channels
0B	AUX_SCAN_RSP	BT 5.0, response to 0A containing more info
0C	AUX_CONNECT_REQ	BT 5.0, sent to an advertiser to initiate a connection
0D	AUX_CHAIN_IND	BT 5.0, chains advertising packets together when they get too big
0E	AUX_CONNECT_RSP	BT 5.0, response to 0C
10-26	Link Layer	Link layer setup and operation
26-FF	Data	General data and proprietary

3. The last packets received for each data type, their length, and their contents.

4. The Send button immediately moves the user to the BLE TX app and allows the user to transmit the selected packet data.

5. The Save button allows the user to save packets in the format used by the BLE TX app.

6. The Done button brings the user back to the Main Menu.

Video:

Below short example on using the BLE Rx App.

https://vimeo.com/886881206?share=copy

References:

BLE Tx App: Bluetooth Low Energy Transmitter

BLE Packet Types: https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/Files/Specification/Assigned_Numbers.pdf?id=3

Reference Code Used in Porting Protocol: https://github.com/JiaoXianjun/BTLE