MacOS – Command line tool for interacting with Bluetooth Low Energy devices, similar to gatttool

bluetoothcommand linemacospythonterminal

I've just found out that some Python code I've got working on Linux also needs to work on OSX.

For reliability reasons, on Linux I've been using a cludgy but effective approach to reading and writing characteristics on Bluetooth Low Energy devices. I've been simply spawning a subprocess that calls the gatttool command with the appropriate arguments and capturing the output. (None of the libraries that I tried would work reliably).

So now that I have to get it working on OSX, it would be wonderful to just use the same approach, but with a tool that works on OSX. Requirements for the tool are:

Read from an arbitrary bluetooth characteristic on an arbitrary device
Write to an arbitrary bluetooth characteristic on an arbitrary device

Is there such a tool for OSX? If not is there a way I can get gatttool working under OSX?

Thanks

Best Answer

GATT isn't exposed on macOS as easily as CoreBluetooth (which you can get to easily from the command line with swift or python and objective c bridging).

The pybluez code is very well commented and has good nuggets like:

See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iobluetooth for Apple's IOBluetooth documentation.

See http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net for details on how to access Objective-C classes through PyObjC.

If those python examples don't work, then if you are a developer, I would start with the Additional Tools downloads for Xcode (latest beta version). If you're not a developer, then the free Xcode would be where I start to see how quickly you could get to GATT or see if the CoreBluetooth API are suitable for what you want to do.

Related Solutions

Turn on bluetooth via terminal/command line

There is an answer over at Superuser. The last post there is what I found to work best, in a slightly different form. The 'checkbox "On"' did not work for me, but the following code did:

# This is only necessary, if AppleScripts are not yet allowed to change checkboxes
tell application "System Events" to set UI elements enabled to true
# Now change the bluetooth status
tell application "System Preferences"
    set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preferences.bluetooth"
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "System Preferences"
            # Enabled is checkbox number 2
            if value of checkbox 2 of window "Bluetooth" is 0 then
                click checkbox 2 of window "Bluetooth"
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
    quit
end tell

You can execute this script using osascript.

Update: I now changed the script to just enable Bluetooth. No toggling anymore.

Can iPhone 4S use Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy channels simultaneously

Yes, I can confrim it by doing some test. I have do the below experiment, after connect the bluetooth ear to play music, then open app BLE Utility on iphone4s, hit scan with BT2.0 device and BT4.0 device, which can find BT4.0 device on same time. Though BT4.0 and 2.0 have physical difference, I think dual-mode BLE can work with two mode on same time by integrate those two parts into one.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Turn on bluetooth via terminal/command line

Can iPhone 4S use Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy channels simultaneously

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