Feather BlueFruit not showing in bluetooth list macOS

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ith
 
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Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:36 am

Feather BlueFruit not showing in bluetooth list macOS

Post by ith »

Hi,

I'm using a Feather Bluefruit 32u4, purchased about 18 months ago.

I've installed everything and all seems fine. Even got the sketches bleuart examples to run and communicate with my phone (onePlus 3) through your app.

Problem is - when i scan for bluetooth devices with my macbook pro (early 2017, osx 10.13.4 high sierra) - it doesn't appear on the list of available devices, even if it's not paired with another device. Other bluetooth devices appear as normal.

Pasted below is the "bluetooth" part of the system information.

Am I doing something wrong? Is the board defective or too old?

Thanks so much,

ith

Bluetooth System Information:

Bluetooth Low Energy Supported: Yes
Handoff Supported: Yes
Instant Hot Spot Supported: Yes
Manufacturer: Broadcom
Transport: UART
Chipset: 20703A2
Firmware Version: v63 c4264
Bluetooth Power: On
Discoverable: On
Connectable: Yes
Auto Seek Pointing: On
Remote wake: On
Vendor ID: 0x05AC
Product ID: 0x007E
HCI Version: 4.2 (0x8)
HCI Revision: 0x10A8
LMP Version: 4.2 (0x8)
LMP Subversion: 0x223F
Device Type (Major): Computer
Device Type (Complete): Mac Portable
Composite Class Of Device: 0x38010C
Device Class (Major): 0x01
Device Class (Minor): 0x03
Service Class: 0x1C0
Auto Seek Keyboard: On

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whiteriver
 
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Re: Feather BlueFruit not showing in bluetooth list macOS

Post by whiteriver »

Hi ith,

Have you found a solution? I'm having the same problem.

wr.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Feather BlueFruit not showing in bluetooth list macOS

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

That’s normal.

The protocol now known as Bluetooth Classic and BLE are different and incompatible protocols that happen to be managed by the same working group (which seems to love confusingly-similar names).

BT-C devices have to obey a predefined set of rules and device categories. That doesn’t leave any room for hackers, but makes an OS developer’s life easy.. they can write a complete and correct BT-C support stack from the spec, and don’t have to test it against every device in the world.

BLE is more free-form. It has a few rules about how data is arranged, and there are some standard profiles for things like BLE keyboards and mice, but ultimately the developer decides what messages to send and what to do with them. That’s great for hackers, but makes it impossible for OS developers to write a complete BLE system. All they can do is provide communication with the BLE radio and throw in some functions to handle the basic data structures. Beyond that, it’s an application’s job to locate a BLE device, open a connection to it, and communicate with it.

The Mac’s Bluetooth control panel and menu item only show BT-C devices, and don’t show BLE devices.

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whiteriver
 
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Re: Feather BlueFruit not showing in bluetooth list macOS

Post by whiteriver »

thanks mike, the behavior is now clear. I'm going to use the BLE guides to create the communication with my board.

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