BLE Sniffer crashing

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

schef — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 12:56:13 GMT

I have no problems with github.com/.../BLESniffer_Python on linux.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

David Edwin — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 07:20:37 GMT

See my last comment above. Additionally the OS X Sniffer does not have this issue, so this is confirmed to be a PC software issue.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

David Edwin — Thu, 19 May 2016 14:40:18 GMT

My suggestion would be to use the Adafruit python scripts and fix the SnifferAPI python yourself if you can for an immediate fix. The source is available as part of the Sniffer release (SnifferAPI.zip), I am unable to schedule a fix for this issue at this point.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Thu, 19 May 2016 11:21:15 GMT

BTW I noticed I receive around 35 advertisers instead of the first stated 20.

Any idea when a fix might become available?

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Wed, 18 May 2016 12:11:03 GMT

I added a new log file in the original message.

Regarding the memory usage: I have about 4 GB of free memory and the sniffer console always crashes within 30s, never reaching more than 15 MB of memory usage.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

David Edwin — Wed, 18 May 2016 10:14:14 GMT

Can you delete old log files (log.txt, log.txt.1 , log.txt.2 etc) and get a fresh log file ?, use the "s" option to get to the folder

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Wed, 18 May 2016 09:58:19 GMT

Yes, I used exec InvalidateFW and installed 5.10n just before for testing.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

David Edwin — Wed, 18 May 2016 09:52:28 GMT

Did you also specifically downgrade the firmware using the jlink documentation mentioned above ?

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Wed, 18 May 2016 09:49:06 GMT

I have PCA10031 v1.1.0, and just tested with 5.10n. Unfortunately, the result is the same...

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

David Edwin — Wed, 18 May 2016 09:01:56 GMT

20 beacons is not a lot, what is the nRF51-Dongle version ? Can you down grade your jlink to 5.10n if you are using the latest nRF51-Dongle (PCA10031 v1.1.0). See the section on "J-Link / J-Trace firmware" in the UM08001_JLink.pdf that is present your jlink installation.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Wed, 18 May 2016 08:30:12 GMT

Any update on this?

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Tue, 10 May 2016 15:12:12 GMT

I tried the Adafruit software, but it seems this is also using the Python API. And since the problem seems to be in the Python API, it crashes exactly the same. Unfortunately I don't have access to an OSX system. I also verfied that there is no crash if I run the sniffer in an environment with only a few beacons instead of the 20 beacons I have in my test setup.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

David Edwin — Mon, 09 May 2016 11:48:01 GMT

Hmmm. The python script seems to be crashing so we should try to remove that from the equation. You can try the PC solutions from Adafruit or the OS X BTLE Sniffer software . If they fail as well, then we can examine the UART interface.

Let us know what happens after you use different PC software.

Added: Ok, as you say, it is not changing with the Adafruit python.

I have a limited work around, it appears that the memory usage of the ble-sniffer PC console is a bit odd as it seems to grow quite fast, so I suggest that you have just the sniffer running so that it has a lot of memory available for itself. The work around is limited as it will eventually run out of memory and crash. I measured usage excess of 100MB when having about 20 devices. I am acknowledging it as a bug and needs a fix.

Using the OS X version of the console seems to be only real work around.

RE: BLE Sniffer crashing

bds — Fri, 06 May 2016 10:27:58 GMT

If the problem is the UART throughput through the J-Link firmware, could I bypass this with an FTDI cable?