Adafruit BLE Sniffer Installation on Windows 10
Tom Hildebrand
9/17/2021
The installation requires the following components and steps:
(1) Hardware
Adafruit BLE Sniffer hardware. The product has an on-board Silicon Labs CP210x USB-to-UART bridge, and is preloaded with Silicon Labs sniffer firmware version 2. With the proper driver (see below), it looks to Windows like a COM port. Install the driver (step 2 below), then plug the sniffer dongle into a USB port. The product description is here: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2269
(2) USB/UART bridge driver
Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART bridge VCP driver
https://www.silabs.com/documents/public ... Driver.zip Other operating systems drivers are also available at their website https://www.silabs.com
Install the USB/UART bridge driver (see above) by extracting the downloaded zip file and running the 64-bit installer CP210xVCPinstaller_x64.exe (or the 32-bit x86 version if your Windows is still 32bit). After the installation, insert the sniffer dongle into a USB port on your computer (direct USB, avoid USB hubs). The sniffer should now be visible in Computer Management > Device Manager > Ports (COM and LPT). It will be listed as “ Silicon Labs CP210x UART Bridge (COMxyz)”.
(3) Python 2
The extcap code below (plugin for Wireshark) was written in/for Python2. Although this is an old version of Python (everybody uses Python3 these days) you need Python2 for this project. The extcap code will not run under Python3. Download the latest (terminal) release of Python2 https://www.python.org/ftp/python-2718/ ... .amd64.msi
Run the downloaded .msi installer. When asked, choose an installation target directory, e.g.
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C:\Program Files\Python27
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C:\Program Files\Python2
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C:\Program Files\Python27\Scripts
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path
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python
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<CTRL-Z> <Return>
(4) Python installer “PIP”
We will soon need to install the pyserial package for Python. You can either install pyserial manually (cumbersome) or install a package installer “pip” first (easy), and then pyserial (now also easy). So let’s do that. Open a command window with administrator privileges: in the Windows search box type “command”. In the best match search result, right-click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as administrator”. In the window that opens, type
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python -m ensurepip –upgrade
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pip
(5) pyserial (Python Serial library)
While still in the administrator command window from the previous step, type
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pip install pyserial
(6) extcap (plugin for Wireshark)
Install the Nordic Semiconductor extcap (version2.0.0 Beta 1) plugin for Wireshark. Use only this version, do not use version 4 or any other version, they will not work. Download it from the Adafruit website https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/a ... extcap.zip Extract the contents of the .zip file into the Wireshark extcap folder
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C:\Program Files\Wireshark\extcap
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cd C:\Program Files\Wireshark\extcap
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nrf_sniffer.bat
(7) Wireshark
Download and run the latest Windows Installer (64bit) for Wireshark from https://www.wireshark.org/download.html During the installation, accept all suggested components. Accept (or modify) the suggested install path. Accept the suggestion to install Npcap (it is needed). When offered, select installation of USBpcap too. Now Reboot Windows.
(8) Using Wireshark with the BLE sniffer
Start Wireshark. The sniffer should now appear as one of the data sources:
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rNF Sniffer (COMxyz)