Sniffing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Communications
January 15, 2023
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In this video, we will have a go at sniffing Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE data. Being able to do this is very useful for debugging BLE problems. Sniff an ESP32-based Bluetooth LE test setup with an nRF52840 dongle from Nordic Semiconductor and inspect the captured data with the freeware network protocol sniffer tool Wireshark.
This video does not go into the technical details of Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE, we will just set up a small BLE-based data logging system and a BLE sniffer and then have a look at the data that is flowing around in such a system. The BLE system comprises a sensor node and a display node.
The sensor node consists of an ESP32-C3 module with a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor attached to it. The sensor node is the BLE server. The display node is made of an ESP32 Pico Kit with a small OLED display connected to it. The display node is the BLE client.
For the BLE Sniffer an nRF52840 dongle from Nordic Semiconductor is used together with Wireshark.
This video does not go into the technical details of Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE, we will just set up a small BLE-based data logging system and a BLE sniffer and then have a look at the data that is flowing around in such a system. The BLE system comprises a sensor node and a display node.
The sensor node consists of an ESP32-C3 module with a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor attached to it. The sensor node is the BLE server. The display node is made of an ESP32 Pico Kit with a small OLED display connected to it. The display node is the BLE client.
For the BLE Sniffer an nRF52840 dongle from Nordic Semiconductor is used together with Wireshark.
Resources
- Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 USB Dongle
- nRF Bluetooth LE Sniffer User Guide
- ESP32-C3-DevKitM-1
- ESP32-PICO-Kit V4
- Article "Bluetooth Low Energy with ESP32-C3 and ESP32"
- Elektor September/October 2022 (PDF)
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