Hi all, I’m experiencing a bit of trouble using the BlueZ D-Bus API for broadcast advertising. In particular, I’m trying to generate iBeacon advertisements using the API. So far, I have successfully used the D-Bus API to implement LE peripheral advertising (Type = ‘peripheral’). However, getting BlueZ to generate well-formed iBeacon packets is proving problematic. In the process of debugging, I used hcidump to obtain the advertising payload produced by my code. I have a reference implementation using the HCI socket API to generate iBeacon advertisements, and this works well. Here is the advertising payload generated by the HCI code (which I obtained from here: https://github.com/carsonmcdonald/bluez-ibeacon/blob/master/bluez-beacon/ibeacon.c). ============================================================== Working advertising payload generated by HCI code ============================================================== Total AD 0 Ad AD 1 Ad Apple Inc Length Len Type Flags Len Type --------- | | | | | | | | 1e 02 01 1a 1a ff 4c 00 iBeacon Prefix . . . . . . . U U I D . . . . --------- ------------------------------------- | | | 02 15 56 5c a5 be 7a df . . . . . . U U I D . . . . . . . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------- 4f 7b b2 68 91 f4 08 d7 . . . . . Major=10 Minor=10 Tx --------- --------- --------- Power Padding | | | | | | | 70 cd 00 0a 00 0a cf 00 ============================================================ I am using the terminology from this packet diagram (http://www.argenox.com/wp-content/uploads/ibeacon-packet-format.png). Packets containing this advertising payload are correctly recognised by iOS devices as iBeacon packets. In my D-Bus code, I am sending advertisements to BlueZ with the following parameters: - Type = 'broadcast' - ServiceUUIDs = [] - ManufacturerData = { 0x4C: 02 15 [UUID] 00 0a 00 0a } (2 byte manufacturer ID + 22 bytes of data) - SolicitUUIDs = [] - ServiceData = [] - IncludeTxPower = True This follows the iBeacon spec as closely as possible. Unfortuantely, the packets generated by BlueZ are not recognised by iOS devices! On closer inspection, it becomes apparent why this is the case: ============================================================== Broken advertisement payload generated by D-Bus code ============================================================== iBeacon Total AD 1 Ad Apple Inc Prefix . . Length Len Type --------- --------- ----- | | | | | | | | 1d 19 ff 4c 00 02 15 56 . . . . . . U U I D . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------- 5c a5 be 7a df 4f 7b b2 . . . . . . U U I D . . . . Major -------------------------------------------- ----- | | 68 91 f4 08 d7 70 cd 00 Minor=10 Tx ? ? ? ? Padding -- --------- Power? --------- --------- | | | | | | | | 0a 00 0a 02 0a 08 00 00 ============================================================== The most obvious difference between this packet and the correct one is that this packet is missing the AD 0 section! BlueZ fails to emit this part of the advertisement packet altogether. I assume that without this section, the packet is sufficiently malformed that devices cannot recognise it as an iBeacon packet. Is this a bug, or am I missing something? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Alex -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-bluetooth" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
