Cannot connect to BB-8 Sphero. Beleive it is a security level issue and/or random address

Question

Cannot connect to BB-8 Sphero. Beleive it is a security level issue and/or random address

rfestag opened this issue 8 years ago · comments

I am trying to use artoo (ruby library for interfacing with various projects, including Sphero). Their documentation suggests using gort to pair/connect to the device, which (as I understand) should create a /dev/rfcomm0 device for artoo to connect to. Their documentation appears to be out of date (since it tells you to pair, but there doesn't appear to be a pair subcommand anymore). In any case, when I try to simply connect as follows, I get "Cannot create connection. Input/output error":

sudo gort bluetooth connect <ADDR> hci0

I found that using gatttool, I can connect only with I set my address to random and security level to medium.

gatttool -l medium -t random <ADDR> -I

This lets me connect to the BB-8 (although I haven't tried doing more than printing characteristics because I'm not familiar enough with the system), but it doesn't create a /dev/rfcomm0 (or other device) I can point artoo at.

Is there something I'm missing? I assume there currently is no way to set the security level, and I assume it defaults to low. Is that correct? If so, what would it take to support other security levels and/or random addresses?

Ron Evans · Answer 1 · Mon Dec 05 2016 04:20:15 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Hi @rfestag to connect to a BB-8 you need to use Bluetooth Low Energy aka BLE aka Bluetooth 4.0, not Bluetooth Classic aka Bluetooth 2.0. With BLE there is not a pairing step, you do not need to use Gort for this.

Check out the Gobot Ollie example, the Sphero Ollie uses the same API at the Sphero BB-8: https://github.com/hybridgroup/gobot/blob/master/examples/ollie.go

Hope that helps!

Ryan Festag · Answer 2 · Mon Dec 05 2016 04:36:09 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Thanks for the quick reply. If I'm understanding correctly, that implies that BB-8 would require a new adapter in artoo if I wanted to use Ruby to control it? Since the sphero adapter expects a device as a parameter, and connecting the same way that example shows directly connects without allocating a device?

Ron Evans · Answer 3 · Mon Dec 05 2016 04:55:30 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Yes you are correct about needed to add the BLE support to Artoo.

Ron Evans · Answer 4 · Wed Jan 04 2017 22:41:38 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

The new version of Gort allows for BLE scanning on Linux by using the gort scan ble command.

Now closing this issue, thanks again for the feedback.