How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

Vidar Berg — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 06:10:17 GMT

Thanks for the update. I tested the ble_app_hid_mouse example today with and without bonding, and it turns out my assumption was wrong - CoreBluetooth starts subscribing to the battery service even if I just pair without bonding.

Despite this, the battery level only gets displayed when I pair with the bonding flag set.

Sniffer captures for reference:

- devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ble_5F00_app_5F00_hid_5F00_mouse_5F00_w_5F00_bonding.pcapng

- devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ble_5F00_app_5F00_hid_5F00_mouse_5F00_wo_5F00_bonding.pcapng

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

cor10 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 20:39:40 GMT

Hey, no worries on the delay. Thanks for the link to the spec, that makes sense.
Regarding the behavior or CoreBluetooth, that would make sense about bonding....and eventually, we will support bonding for our devices that we make for users, but our development devices perform Pairing w/o Bonding because its just a simple/more convenient process.

In any event, this sort of confirms what I was reaching for, at least for the time being. Until I am able to explore the bonding behavior in greater depth, I may stop trying to get this battery level indication to work on my Mac. I have already seen that the battery level indication that I seek is working perfectly on a PC, so it does seem Mac-specific and likely it needs Bonding.

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

Vidar Berg — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:31:20 GMT

Hello,

Sorry for the delayed response. The HID over GATT profile does require bonding according to the specification here: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/hid-over-gatt-profile-1-0/ (see section 6.1). I have not found any documentation from Apple stating whether the enforce this requirement or not. But from past experience, I don't think corebluetooth will automatically subscribe to a characteristic unless it is bonded with the device.

Do you not support bonding in your project?

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

cor10 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 03:37:29 GMT

Hello Vidar, just wanted to follow up regarding my recent question about whether or not this feature only works with BONDED devices. Do you know if this is definitely the case? Thanks

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

cor10 — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 09:50:16 GMT

I believe I finally found the answer. Can you verify on your end that the Battery Level Status Icon in the Bluetooth Drop-down Menu is only present for devices that perform bonding? I am using an nRF52840 DK with nRF5 SKD v16 with s140, and all I did to edit the default nrf ble_app_hids_mouse example was to disable bonding:

#define SEC_PARAM_BOND                  0

and in the peer_manager_init() function:

sec_param.kdist_own.enc  = 1;
sec_param.kdist_own.id   = 1;
sec_param.kdist_peer.enc = 1;
sec_param.kdist_peer.id  = 1;

With these changes, I can make a BLE connection to my nRF52840 DK, but I can no longer see the Battery Level Status Icon indicator in the Bluetooth drop-down menu. Is that the same on your end? Would there be any way to enable this convenient battery level indication without bonding?

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

Vidar Berg — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 12:04:36 GMT

Thanks for confirming. Hopefully it won't take too long to find out what change it is.

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

cor10 — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 08:49:45 GMT

It does appear to be an issue with our custom hardware or the firmware changes we have made along the way....your default HID Mouse example does behave as expected with the battery status icon in the drop down menu. Thanks

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

Vidar Berg — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 12:28:08 GMT

Hi,

No worries. Unfortunately, there is not much else I can think of except for trying to compare differences between your implementation and the one in the SDK (assuming battery reporting works when you try our HID example).

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

cor10 — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 02:35:35 GMT

Hi Vidar,

Sorry for the delayed response. I can connect to my device via the iOS nRF Connect app and I can successfully Subscribe to the Battery Level Notifications. While keeping an eye on this subscription, I verified that it does appear to be reporting the correct battery percentages. So from this standpoint, everything seems to be working as expected (minus the battery icon in the Bluetooth dropdown menu).

As a next step, I will try and verify the original SDK example works on my end and with my DK. I can report back to you my findings, but am also curious if you have any other ideas I could try.

Many thanks

cor10

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

Vidar Berg — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 10:36:46 GMT

It worked for me when I tried the original ble_app_hids_mouse example in SDK 16.0.0 which enables the Battery service by default.

Could you try to connect to your device from the nRF connect app on Android or iOS, then subscribe to battery level notifications to verify that it works?

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

cor10 — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 23:18:48 GMT

In this photo that I am sharing, you can see my store-bought M720 Bluetooth Mouse and its battery level. The custom device I am working on is named "TL_Dev" and although we have an active and otherwise functional connection, it wont display the battery level.

RE: How can I display the Bluetooth HID Mouse Battery Level Status Icon next to device name in Mac OS Bluetooth Preferences list?

Vidar Berg — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 12:04:52 GMT

Hello,

I can't seem to get the battery level indicator either when I connect my Logitech mouse, but does show if I click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar:

Do you see the same?

Best regards,

Vidar

Edit: To clarify, macOS did not display the battery level for my logitech mouse in Bluetooth preferences either. It did however display it in the dropdown menu when I selected the bluetooth icon from the menubar. So I think this indicates that the battery level can't be displayed in Bluetooth preferences. Though I haven't found anything in the Apple documentation to confirm this.