Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Device Connector

Easily discover, connect and then read and write data to Bluetooth Low Energy devices with IOTech’s high-performance BLE device connector

Protocol Description

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), is a light-weight subset of classic Bluetooth and was introduced as part of the Bluetooth 4.0 specification. BLE is a close-range, wireless technology that is prevalent in connecting low-power or battery-based consumer IoT devices including wearables, phones and tablet PCs. Compared to the full Bluetooth protocol, BLE is focused on delivering small amounts of data at low speeds.

BLE devices define both a General Access Profile (GAP) and a Generic Attribute Profile (GATT). The GAP controls the connections and visibility of devices, while the GATT defines how two devices transfer data via BLE Services and Characteristics. GATT-based data flow occurs after two devices are connected based on the GAP advertising and discovery process.

BLE devices are categorized into 2 types: peripheral (GATT Server) devices, such as heart rate monitors or proximity tags, are the small, low-power, resource-constrained devices that connect to a much more powerful central (GATT Client) device such as a phone, tablet or gateway. A peripheral can only be connected to a single central device at a time, so once connected, a peripheral will stop advertising itself.

Bluetooth Low Energy Connector Specification

IOTech’s BLE device connector supports a wide range of functionality including configurable dynamic discovery and automatic onboarding of watched BLE devices.

The BLE device connector implements the following key features:

Note the BLE device connector requires the installation of BlueZ and the D-BUS daemon on the host machine running the connector.

• Discovery of BLE devices that are in advertising mode and within range

• Connecting to a BLE device that meets the above criteria

• The capability to automatically onboard watched devices configured by an allow-list and block-list

• Reading the values of a connected device’s specified GATT characteristics

• Writing the values of a connected device’s specified GATT characteristics

• Automatic notification when a connected device’s GATT characteristic is updated

• Additional support for notifications when multiple GATT characteristics use the same UUID

• The ability to specify conversion functions for a set of vendor-specific GATT characteristics

• Automatic disconnection when the BLE device is removed or is out-of-range

• Support for Boolean, Int8, Uint8, Int16, Uint16, Int32, Uint32, Int64, Uint64, Float32, Float64 and String data types

Note the BLE device connector requires the installation of BlueZ and the D-BUS daemon on the host machine running the connector.

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