Pinging devices with nRF52840 Dongle

[0Khurram0]

I am trying to use the nRF52840 Dongle as a controller with the Pi and ping devices (e.g. using l2ping to ping my phone)

I have flashed the bluetooth hci_usb sample on to the dongle and can see the dongle as a new controller in bluetoothctl

1) I am only able to do LE scan with the dongle (setting "transport le" in "menu scan" in bluetoothctl). A classic scan in bluetoothctl (with the dongle as the controller) is not able to find my phone

2) When I try to L2ping my phone (android with Bluetooth 5.0) I get a response saying

“Can't connect: Operation not supported”

---> Does the nRF52840 Dongle only support BLE? or is there a way (e.g. by possibly including support for classic bluetooth)?

---> Otherwise, is there a way to confirm that a device/phone is within range using the nRF52840 Dongle (e.g. as a controller with Raspberry Pi)?

Note: my phone does not emit BLE by default (I can get it to emit BLE using the nRF connect mobile app, but it is preferred that no app be downloaded)

[Karl Ylvisaker]

Hello,

(e.g. using l2ping to ping my phone)

As far as I know l2ping is only for Bluetooth Classic, is it not?
Please note that none of our products have support for Bluetooth Classic, only Bluetooth Low Energy is supported.

---> Otherwise, is there a way to confirm that a device/phone is within range using the nRF52840 Dongle (e.g. as a controller with Raspberry Pi)?

If the phone is advertising BLE packets you can pick up these packages if you are within range, thus confirming that the phone is in the vicinity.
If the phone is only acting as a central - i.e scanning for peripheral devices - it will not advertise, so you will have to pick up scan requests from the phone to the peripheral, to determine whether or not it is in range.
If the phone is using passive scanning (not sending scan requests) you will not be able to find out whether it is in the vicinity or not.

Best regards,
Karl