"The other" Bluetooth Thread

Pulsar33

Hello,
I don't want to spam "The" Bluetooth Thread in which you speak mainly about phone calls and music items. My problem may be specific, or not, I don't know. At this time, my E5 runs Ubuntu Touch OTA15. However, I follow you and try to be active. Moreover, I installed UBPorts OTA3 on my daugther's E5 and FP2, and I will soon help her to switch to OTA4.

Well, I have a clean Bluetooth GPS which works fine with my desktop running MINT18.3, but not with my BQ E5. This GPS provides a serial port and sends NMEA frames at 2400 bauds, which is a standard usage. Once connected, you've only to redirect what's is coming on the serial port to a file to capture your track and more.

This GPS is seen by my BQ E5, connects for some seconds then disconnects, despite the "automatic connect" choice. If I "forget this device" and start a new connexion, the pin code is asked and granted, and connexion on then off follows. So I made this test using Terminal.

1° Desktop MINT18.3 :
pulsar33@Minerve ~ $ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
[GPS ADDRESS] BT-GPS-3197E9
pulsar33@Minerve ~ $ sudo rfcomm bind 0 [GPS ADDRESS] 1
[sudo] Mot de passe de pulsar33 :
pulsar33@Minerve ~ $ ls /dev/rf*
/dev/rfcomm0 /dev/rfkill
pulsar33@Minerve ~ $ sudo cat /dev/rfcomm0
$GPGGA,075521.000,...
$GPGSA,A,3,26,29,...
$GPRMC,075521.000,A,...
^C
This works fine and can be redirected to a file.

2° BQ E5 OTA15 :
phablet@ubuntu-phablet ~ $ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
[GPS ADDRESS] BT-GPS-3197E9
phablet@ubuntu-phablet ~ $ sudo rfcomm bind 0 [GPS ADDRESS] 1
RFCOMM TTY support not available
phablet@ubuntu-phablet ~ $ ls /dev/rf*
/dev/rfkill
Does someone know why "TTY support" is not available for Touch ?
Is it the same for UBports OTA3 and OTA4 ?

Best regards
Pulsar33

Pulsar33

Nobody knows ?
Good evening
Pulsar33

Pulsar33

Up
Would be happy to receive some words here ...
Pulsar33

dobey

Hi,

I am not sure why TTY support would be reported as unavailable. However, I'm also not sure if the location service has support for using an external GPS device yet either, so even if you were able to connect to the device, it may not be useful with the phone at the moment.

I would suggest to please open an issue on the github for this, if you have not already.

Pulsar33

Many thanks for answering me !

I don't want to use the location service with an external GPS (the internal GPS works for that). I just want to easily capture my track and other parameters in a file (and then make statistics or import the track to Openrunner for example). That works with a laptop (or desktop) running MINT without problem (and needs no specific application except Terminal) as said above.

I will follow your suggestion but being currently with Ubuntu Touch OTA-15, I tried to know before that if the problem is the same for UBports OTA-3 and OTA-4 in order to give a usefull information.

Does the exact message "RFCOMM TTY support not available" make sense for developpers ?
When speaking of Bluetooth today, people think to car connexion, voice calls, music playing, but before all that, the first function offered by bluetooth was the RS232 replacement ... Have we lost it ?

Best regards
Pulsar33

dobey

The rfcomm command is not the only way to create a serial Bluetooth connection. It may be that it simply does not work that way on the devices which require the Android layer underneath and hybris, in order to work.

It's almost certainly possible to create such a connection, but UT is not a standard traditional PC Linux distribution, and many things do not work the same way, due to the hardware and Android/hybris, or just because of security.

RE: capture of data from this device, are you saying you would carry it with you, but not the phone, and then later sync the data to the phone to import into an app? It may just be that an app needs to be created to do what you want and initiate the bluetooth pairing to that device. For example, I'm pretty sure the Rockwork app for Pebble watches uses a serial connection for communications.

Pulsar33

@dobey said in "The other" Bluetooth Thread:

The rfcomm command is not the only way to create a serial Bluetooth connection.

RE: capture of data from this device, are you saying you would carry it with you, but not the phone, and then later sync the data to the phone to import into an app?

No : the GPS would be fixed on my bike and the phone would be near it, where I found it usefull, capturing in real time. This GPS doesn't save data, it just transmits and forgets it.

The important point here is to use basic serial communication (this GPS being an example but not the only one) without the need to install an application. If you have other OS tools suggestions than rfcomm being able to open a bluetooth serial line, I would be glad to give a try ...

Once more, many thanks for your answers.
Pulsar33

jezek

Just a guess...
How about trying, some rfcomm alternative, like bluez-tools? Or am I wrong?

Pulsar33

@jezek : Thank you for the suggestion
However, this confirm the problem :
[bluetooth]# info [GPS ADDRESS]
Device [GPS ADDRESS]
Name: BT-GPS-3197E9
Alias: BT-GPS-3197E9
Class: 0x001f00
Paired: yes
Trusted: yes
Blocked: no
Connected: no
LegacyPairing: yes
UUID: Serial Port (00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
RSSI: -45

[bluetooth]# connect [GPS ADDRESS]
Attempting to connect to [GPS ADDRESS]
[CHG] Device [GPS ADDRESS] Connected: yes
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.NotAvailable
[CHG] Device [GPS ADDRESS] Connected: no

This is the same result as when I do a connexion through the Touch UI
The error NotAvailable sounds like the rfcomm answer ...
Have a good day
Pulsar33

jezek

@pulsar33 oh, so I don't need to try. Time saved. Thanks.

Pulsar33

@pulsar33 said in "The other" Bluetooth Thread:

The important point here is to use basic serial communication (this GPS being an example but not the only one) without the need to install an application. If you have other OS tools suggestions than rfcomm being able to open a bluetooth serial line, I would be glad to give a try ...

Any other idea ?

And the most important :
@pulsar33 said in "The other" Bluetooth Thread:

Does the exact message "RFCOMM TTY support not available" make sense for developpers ?

Have a nice day
Pulsar33

jezek

@pulsar33 said in "The other" Bluetooth Thread:

@pulsar33 said in "The other" Bluetooth Thread:

The important point here is to use basic serial communication (this GPS being an example but not the only one) without the need to install an application. If you have other OS tools suggestions than rfcomm being able to open a bluetooth serial line, I would be glad to give a try ...

Any other idea ?

Maybe this could be any help.
https://github.com/ykasidit/bluez-compassion
Or is it as useless as my previous suggestion?

Pulsar33

@jezek : Hum, I don't know ...
It seems to be scripts using rfcomm.
bt-serial : Connects to a specific RFCOMM based service on a remote device and then creates a RFCOMM TTY device for it

Not installed by default I think. So, a bit out of scope.

Best regards
Pulsar33

L-00117

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