nRF51822 Bluefruit LE Sniffer not seeing packets

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bsloane
 
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Joined: Tue Jan 10, 2023 6:59 pm

nRF51822 Bluefruit LE Sniffer not seeing packets

Post by bsloane »

I recently ordered a Bluefruit LE Sniffer (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2269), and have been trying to get it to work with wireshark under Linux.

I am able to manually connect to the device at /dev/ttyUSB0 over serial with minicom. When I do so, I see constantly changing giberish in the terminal, and the amber LED to the left of the DFU button begins blinking. This indicates to me that the device is capturing something and has a visible indication for when it is transmitting data to the PC.

I have installed the wireshark extension referenced here https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing- ... nd-python3 along with the needed python dependencies. In wireshark, when the sniffer is plugged in, I see an and am able to use an option to capture on it. I can initiate a capture, but do not see any packets when I do so. Additionally, the amber LED on the sniffer does not illuminate, indicating to me that Wireshark is not succesfully connecting to the sniffer.

If the sniffer is not plugged in when I start Wireshark, then I do not see sniffer interface at all, suggesting that the plugin is working well enough to at least detect when a sniffer is available.

The interface in wireshark is displayed as "nRF Sniffer for Bluetooth LE: /dev/ttyUSB0-None". I am suspicious about the "-None" at the end of that, as the device name is just "/dev/ttyUSB0".

The blue LED under CON flashes contioually when the sniffer is plugged in, and the mode LED is never illuminated. I believe this is the expected behaviour when running the sniffing firmware. To be safe, I have tried running with both settings on the mode switch, to no apparent difference.

While running the sniffer, I was activly communicating between two devices over bluetooth LE. The sniffer was within 3 feet of them, and approximatly between them.

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