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I'm learning about Eddystone beacons (URL at this moment) and I'm trying to understand the purpose of each field. I'm getting a bit hung up on one, mainly because it's not explained.

https://hackaday.io/project/10314-raspberry-pi-3-as-an-eddystone-url-beacon

has Flags Data as 0x06, while

https://github.com/google/eddystone/blob/master/eddystone-url/implementations/linux/advertise-url

uses 0x1A, but neither explains why the value is set there. The rest is more or less understandable, but I just don't get this bit. Can anyone elaborate?

Thanks,

Matt

tranzmatt
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    What you are analyzing right now is how BLE packet looks like (actually only the payload). If you are interested ONLY in Eddystone URL protocol then this is probably better reading: [Eddystone URL specification](https://github.com/google/eddystone/tree/master/eddystone-url) – Dietatko Apr 07 '17 at 18:01
  • Turns out I need BLE. Eddystone-UID is also something I have to consider. Thanks. – tranzmatt Apr 07 '17 at 18:29

1 Answers1

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The flags are described in supplement to Bluetooth Core Specification in section 1.3.

The difference in your case is:
0x06 - The device is BLE only. The full Bluetooth stack is not supported.
0x1A - The device can be used as BLE as well as full Bluetooth Controller/Host simultaneously.

Dietatko
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  • So if I were trying to use the BT device on my Raspberry Pi 3, I'd want the 0x1A flags to keep other functionality? Seems like 0x06 would be if I had a dedicated "dumb" beacon device not meant for anything else. – tranzmatt Apr 07 '17 at 18:38
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    I agree that 0x06 is for dumb beacon devices not supporting full BT stack. But value 0x1A is questionable. The specs says "Simultaneous LE and BR/EDR to **Same** Device". I am not completely sure what does that mean. But I think there can still be other independent BT connection even with 0x06. I expect this refers to kind of mixed/dual BLE and full stack connection between same devices. Unfortunately don't know BT stack that well. The main question is whether Raspberry Pi 3 supports this mode. – Dietatko Apr 07 '17 at 21:45
  • Alas, I'm not all that familiar myself and I've not been able to get much in the way of docs. I'll try to experiment with my RPi3 to see if it's capable of advertising as a beacon while still maintaining other functionality. If anyone else knows, I'd be most appreciative. – tranzmatt Apr 10 '17 at 15:05