ibeacon detection

[yash012]

Hi i'm new here i am working on a project , i need to detect a ibeacon on Raspberry pi 3 .
it is detected and i can see the MAC address well in Terminal using Bluetooth scan on command but i want to do that in python ,
i used this:

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nearby_devices = bluetooth.discover_devices(lookup_names = True)

but in output it only shows other Bluetooth device, ibeacon is not detected.
can anyone help me on this.

[PiGraham]

This is new to me, but interesting. I found this page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon#Technical_details

I seems an ibeacon is not like a regular BT device. Its not pairable.
That page lists an hcitool command that you try.

[yash012]

thanks but it is not very useful as i need to detect ibeacon using python in Raspberry pi.

[topguy]

In the Bluetooth standard, and in the chipsets, scanning for classic bluetooth devices and BLE devices ( which a beacon is ) is two different things.

Find a Python module with BLE support or use a different method if the module you are using claims to have BLE support.

[PiGraham]

thanks but it is not very useful as i need to detect ibeacon using python in Raspberry pi.

It tells you what you have to do, what commands you have to send to scan for beacons. You can do all that from Python with system or process calls, or you can look for a Python module that handles those messages. Either way, if you read that page you should know more about what you have to do than you did before.

Even if you only used that info to check that your system can see beacons from command line you have a win. It's a very useful test of the hardware / system config.

[Paul Webster]

You could try this - from 2014 (so check around for updates and alternative routes) ... it includes doing it from Python
http://www.switchdoc.com/2014/08/ibeaco ... er-python/

[yash012]

thanks but it is not very useful as i need to detect ibeacon using python in Raspberry pi.

It tells you what you have to do, what commands you have to send to scan for beacons. You can do all that from Python with system or process calls, or you can look for a Python module that handles those messages. Either way, if you read that page you should know more about what you have to do than you did before.

Even if you only used that info to check that your system can see beacons from command line you have a win. It's a very useful test of the hardware / system config.

Thanks you are right about that i did got a lot of information about ibeacon , i am able to do that in terminal using command i just now need to figure out a way to do that in Python.

[Douglas6]

Check out bluepy: https://github.com/IanHarvey/bluepy

[yash012]

Thank you very much this is very much helpful.

[yash012]

i used the bluepy for detection of BLE devices , the command

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sudo hcitool lescan

works very well but whenever i tried to call that in python using

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BLE = subprocess.getoutput('sudo hcitool lescan')

it always shows me

Set scan parameters failed: Input/output error

, i tried restarting Bluetooth, but problem still remains.

[Douglas6]

Even if using subprocess correctly, that is

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ble = subprocess. check_output(['sudo', 'hcitool', 'lescan'])

you'll run into the fact that lescan runs indefinitely, and that line will never return.

[PiGraham]

This may help

After spending a few hours working this out, I came up with this solution. The problem with hcitool lescan is that it doesn't return until it receives a SIGINT, so we send it one with Python:

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    bashCommand = "hcitool lescan"
    process = subprocess.Popen(bashCommand.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    time.sleep(3)
    os.kill(process.pid, signal.SIGINT)
    output = process.communicate()[0].

This for me returned a string containing all of the mac addresses found, after a 3 second search

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2687 ... -to-a-file

[Douglas6]

Thanks for that, PiGraham. Crude, but effective.

[yash012]

Thanks this is good, it seems that this would work very well.

[yash012]

i have been trying to figure out this issue but nothing seems to work , it seems that

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hcitool lescan

only works in terminal , it seems that it keeps running until interrupted cltr+c , well

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 timeout 10s hcitool lescan

helps there in the terminal but it does not work when i try to call it in python.i tried all the suggestions in the link http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2687 ... -to-a-file i also tried bluez which is very convenient for use in Terminal but in that also after passing $ bluetoothctl , terminal goes from [email protected]:~$ to [bluetooth]#.

[PiGraham]

i have been trying to figure out this issue but nothing seems to work , it seems that

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hcitool lescan

only works in terminal , it seems that it keeps running until interrupted cltr+c

That's what

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os.kill(process.pid, signal.SIGINT)

does, sends Ctrl-C to the process (Ctrl-C sends SIGINT).

[yash012]

i have been trying to figure out this issue but nothing seems to work , it seems that

Code: Select all

hcitool lescan

only works in terminal , it seems that it keeps running until interrupted cltr+c

That's what

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os.kill(process.pid, signal.SIGINT)

does, sends Ctrl-C to the process (Ctrl-C sends SIGINT).

i learned that but it did't seem to work , there must be something i am missing i will keep working on it.Thank you all for the suggestions i would like to say that i have started working on Raspberry pi recently, there is so for me to learn , this forum has been very helpful for me.