Bluetooth Versioning

RE: Bluetooth Versioning

Simonr — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 08:17:06 GMT

Hi David

It's as Jörg and Andrew say, the Bluetooth: Core ver doesn't tell you what Bluetooth version your Linux box supports, and your hardware will have to support BT4.0 or later in order to communicate with nRF devices at all, and version 5.0 or later to use Bluetooth 5 specific features such as Long Range advertising or the increased throughput mode (2Mbps).

Best regards,

Simon

RE: Bluetooth Versioning

Turbo J — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 16:24:30 GMT

That "Bluetooth: Core" version number tells you...

NOTHING AT ALL.

In fact, my Linux box has the same output in dmesg:

[589393.748891] usb 4-3: Product: BCM20702A0
[589393.748895] usb 4-3: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
[589393.748897] usb 4-3: SerialNumber: 5CF37061A8B3
[589394.040583] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[589394.040583] NET: Registered protocol family 31
[589394.040583] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[589394.040583] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[589394.040583] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[589394.040583] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[589394.070820] usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb
[589394.197798] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: chip id 63
[589394.220747] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A
[589394.223698] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A1 (001.002.014) build 000

But this is with a connected BT4.0 USB stick, which can talk to NRF devices via bluetooth low energy.

We would need to know what hardware is actually in your Linux box.

RE: Bluetooth Versioning

awneil — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 16:23:06 GMT

[quote userid="82485" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/51364/bluetooth-versioning"]But my linux box host has older version: Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22[/quote]

Are you sure that's referring to the BT protocol version - not some Linux utility version?

For BLE, you need a BT protocol version of at least 4, and your hardware must have BLE support.

To use BLE 5 features, your Host will need BLE 5 protocol support in both hardware and software.

BLE 5 is backwards-compatible with BLE 4.