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Is there a library available to allow applications to utilise Bluetooth LE in Linux?

Similarly, I know the Motorola RAZR offers a proprietary API but do other devices with dual mode Bluetooth chips (i.e. Galaxy S III) offer an API for Bluetooth LE?

stephenfin
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  • Have you found any good API's? – chwi Jul 08 '12 at 12:18
  • No not yet. And Jellybean didn't include any native APIs :/ – stephenfin Jul 19 '12 at 14:29
  • Man, that sucks. This is where Android comes short since there are so many hardware manufacturers. – chwi Jul 20 '12 at 06:19
  • Nah I don't think it's anything to do with the number of manufacturers...Google really should have included some form of native API/stack in Jellybean. Oh well..."Key Lime Pie" it is I guess – stephenfin Jul 20 '12 at 10:29
  • Looks like there is a bug with S3 incase if you are trying , http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11104708/bluetooth-4-0-smart-low-energy-on-samsung-galaxy-s3 – m4n07 Sep 27 '12 at 09:23
  • Have a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11104708/bluetooth-4-0-smart-low-energy-on-samsung-galaxy-s3/15248881#15248881 – OneWorld Mar 06 '13 at 13:41

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As for Linux...

I've been doing a lot of work with this in Python and unfortunately the existing libraries for LE are either bleeding edge or missing some things. The Bluez 5.X series has support for LE through DBUS. The kernel requirements for it were much higher than the device I needed to use so I was left having to do things by using raw sockets.

With Bluez 4.x I think everything can be done by using raw sockets, setting socket options, and very occasionally an ioctl call. In Python, however, a lot of the constants you need aren't there yet. I had to hack together some modules using the Python C API so I could import the constants from the library header files. If you're okay with doing everything in C you'll find full functionality there.

Tim Tisdall
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I know many people are using Broadcom BLE for developing BLE on Android devices.

chwi
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  • Therefore? And I know for a fact it does not work on the SGS3 – chwi Sep 23 '12 at 07:26
  • Ditto to that. Tried less than two hours ago and it does NOT work. There are a couple of apps on Google Play, namely Bluetooth Smart Scanner and nRF utility, that do use Bluetooth Smart. It does work with my devkit but since there is no access to the libraries nothing can be done in terms of development. If someone could extract the .apk I might be able to get the libraries out. – Moises Jimenez Nov 08 '12 at 11:43