Support for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) / GATT

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It would be great to have wrappers for the Bluetooth Low Energy features added 
in the recent version(s) of BlueZ, to allow for the following features to be 
controlled from a python application:

 * discovery of BLE devices and their GATT services
 * reading and writing of BLE attributes/values
 * creation and management of GATT services

I am interested in contributing, but not sufficiently experienced with the 
pybluez source code to create sensible abstractions for the low-level functions.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by aprsdr...@googlemail.com on 18 Jun 2014 at 1:38

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[GoogleCodeExporter]

Any contribution will be more then wellcome
But I see no easier way  then get familiar with source code.

Maybe You could try to first implement "discovery of BLE devices and their GATT 
services"

As a starting point You could look at discover_devices function in 
https://code.google.com/p/pybluez/source/browse/trunk/bluetooth/bluez.py
it uses _bt.hci_inquiry which is implemented in 
https://code.google.com/p/pybluez/source/browse/trunk/bluez/btmodule.c#1973

Original comment by karu...@wp.pl on 23 Jun 2014 at 1:53

• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

There is also Ian Harvey's project
https://github.com/IanHarvey/bluepy
It wraps bluez 5.4, python sources are in public domain

As of windows support:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/65c9cf4e-e225-4fc3-8c2c-66cd2401d3
ed/how-to-establish-a-connection-from-windows-8-pc-to-a-bluetooth-low-energy-dev
ice

"The Windows 8 Bluetooth GATT apis requires that the device be paired using the 
built-in UI and does not allow application to connect to an arbitrary Bluetooth 
LE device."
So I am not sure how much can be implemented there

Original comment by karu...@wp.pl on 13 Aug 2014 at 10:59

[karulis]

Now we have initial support for BLE on Linux platform - release 0.22

[larsblumberg]

Hi @karulis! Do I find a documentation somewhere what the state of BLE support is right now?

[ksze]

Regarding BLE support, does anybody know whether it's possible (and how) to scan for BLE beacons without root privilege using pybluez?

Currently, if I try to scan for BLE beacons as a normal user (in the "bluetooth" and "lp" unix user groups), I get a RuntimeError:

~ $ ipython
Python 3.6.2 | packaged by rpi | (default, Jul 19 2017, 12:58:40)
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 6.1.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

In [1]: from bluetooth.ble import BeaconService

In [2]: service = BeaconService()

In [3]: service.scan(2)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
RuntimeError                              Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-3-b47b2f3a4f45> in <module>()
----> 1 service.scan(2)

RuntimeError: Set scan parameters failed (are you root?)

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.
PyBluez is not under active development, but we still accept pull requests!
If you've resolved your issue, please post your solution and close this issue. Future users will benefit from the knowledge you share. Thank you.

[filips123]

@rgov @karulis Does BLE works on Windows 10? If not, can it be supported?

[rgov]

I believe BLE only works on Linux. There is no one currently working on the project to add support for this, unfortunately. However, you may be able to use PyQt5 and its cross-platform QBluetooth API.