nRFSniffer shows only Advertisement Indicators

[fatalkernelpanic]

I'm trying to listen to a bluetooth low energy connection between a smart bracelet and my smartphone. In Wireshark 1.10.1 I only can see the Advertising Indicators. As soon as the bracelet is paired with the smartphone application, I can't see any further log entries in wireshark (but I know that there IS data exchange between bracelet and smartphone).

Now I found some older threads in the dev zone (like devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../), where a dev says it's a known bug. Is there any information if and when this bug will be fixed? Or did I bought the sniffer hardware for nothing? I'm really disappointed and frustrated. If this bug won't be fixed, could you recommend a software which is compatible with the hardware?

[Hung Bui]

Could you try to test with 2 devices advertising (make sure you see both of them in Wireshark) and when you press select one device, would you still see the other device in Wireshark ? This is to check if it's actually following that device or simply receive no command from PC.

Could you try to update the latest version of FTDI chip as telling here also ?

[fatalkernelpanic]

Hi, thank you for your support. I have to bracelets, and both of them are shown in wireshark when I have no device selected. If I select a bracelet, I can only see the advertisements of the selected device in wireshark. The advertisements of the other bracelet aren't shown anymore. I already have the latest FTDI version.

[Hung Bui]

Could you attach a sniffer trace ?

It could be that the connect request to establish connection is not captured by the sniffer. Note that the sniffer is made to capture traffic with Nordic chip (on at least one peer) it may not work with BLE communication from other vendors.

[fatalkernelpanic]

Finally, it works! This is how I did it: Make both bracelets advertise themself (both are not connected to the android app). Then I started Wireshark ("w") out of the sniffer application. I can see the advertisments of both devices. Next, I selected device 0 and paired this device with tha android application. After the pairing/connection was successful, I couldn't see any further data in wireshark. Then, I just tried the parameter "h", which means "Define new adv hop sequence". I have tried values from "7" to "9" which stands for channel 37 to 39. At the end, I set it to channel 37 again. After that procedure, I can see the full communication between smartphone and bracelet. I don't exactly know what I did there, but it works. If you know what the adv hop sequence means, could you explain me what I did there? Thank you!

[Hung Bui]

It's partly related to what I mentioned above, by default we customized the sniffer to catch Nordic advertising packets which by default sending advertising packet on channel 37 then 38 then 39 then on next advertising interval we will start with 37 again. (equal to pressing 7 then 8 then 9 when configuring)

Device from other vendor may not use the same hopping scheme, and the option to press -h is to modify to match with the hopping scheme on those devices.

You may want to play a little bit with the scheme to find the one match with your device.