Button won't connect

[Roaders]

On Raspberry Pi 3 with Bluez 5.37. I've made sure that hciconfig is up

I'm new to linux so this has all been a bit painful for me - it took most of the morning to get the correct version of Bluez installed. The situation at the moment is that I can get bluez running, get the daemon running and get flic running. Running all of this doesn't always work. Sometimes I have to stop them all and start them again.

I did manage to get one button discovered - but only once. After a button has been discovered it will never be discovered again so as I didn't write down the mac address for the first button I can't get it again!

When I try to connect to the button it says connecting to then connection failed.

I also need some help on replacing the bluetooth service that comes with Raspbian with the new version of raspbian that I built - at the moment I need to turn the built in service off then start the new one. Also how do I run the daemon and flic as a service?

Sorry for all the questions, I know a lot of these are not flic related specifically.

Any help much appreciated.

[fabianbergmark]

I would suggest disabling the bluetooth service and just run bluetoothd from the src folder in bluez, don't forget -nEd flags (you built with --enable-experimental right). Secondly, you can just type list in the flic executable to list any discovered buttons. A good idea is to, in bluetoothctl issue a power off / power on after you start bluetoothd.

[Roaders]

Thanks for the reply. I did manage to get a list of the 2 buttons that I registered with list - once but now I get nothing with list. I did build with exactly the commands listed on the readme.

I don't understand in bluetoothctl issue a power off / power on

I start bluetooth in the folder I compiled: sudo ./bluetoothd -nEd

in a separate window I can then launch bluetoothctl and I get a [bluetooth] # prompt but I can't type anything.

[fabianbergmark]

if you can't type in bluetoothctl it usually means something is wrong with your bluetooth adapter. I have tried raspberrypi 3 model B and it worked very well for me, so the bluetooth chip is compatible with Flic.

[asabi]

I have the bluetooth adapter on, everything "looks good" until I run strartScan, at that point I get "Failed to start scan: no adapters". I cannot find any information about this error (running on raspberry pi 3 with raspbian).

[pfink]

@asabi: Please check with command hciconfig if your BT adapter is up and running. The term UP RUNNING should appear.

[asabi]

Yes, it does the UP RUNNING.

One thing I noticed is that my bluez version is: 5.23-2+rpi1

Will that be a problem? I am not sure how to upgrade it on the pi 3, all of the tutorials I see assume you install from source, but the pi 3 comes with it.

[Roaders]

There are instructions on the readme about how to download, compile and install bluez.

[asabi]

I understand that 5.38 is broken with flic. I will try with 5.37

[asabi]

Can I simply grab it from here: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/bluetooth/ , or will that be the wrong version?

[pfink]

Yes, you can grab it from there.

[asabi]

I was able to make it work with the downloaded bluez 5.37, but it works only when I cd into the src directory and run the bluetoothd there, otherwise it does not run. I suspect that by default the system still uses the default bluez .. any instructions anywhere to make that work as a default?

I am also using that machine to control my August lock, and it uses bluez as well.

[pfink]

You have to edit the sysv init script. But this is very basic linux knowledge and it would go too far to cover it here. Be aware that fliclib is currently in beta phase (rather alpha in my opinion) which means experimental usage is intended, especially for advanced (linux) users. If you're looking for out-of-the-box instructions how to run everything smoothely for operational use, then it's may better for you to wait for release. Nevertheless, you're free to experiment, find out things and contribute. That's what we all do here.

[gareth-ellis]

I came across similar issues. I was struggling to get the device to pair - originally with 5.38, and then when I checked on here 5.37. Part of the issue I think was knowing whether the flic was locked or not.

Eventually it just started working. If the daemon was able to feedback to say that the device was locked - I may take a look at some point to see if it's possible to expose it - as obviously the flic responds somehow for the android app to be able to say that the flic is locked.

Good so far though - managed to get my flic to interact with node-red & wifi plug sockets quite easily

[fabianbergmark]

Nice! I can add a locked notice in the flic executable

[morganm]

So I got my Flic's in the mail last week and gave this a crack on my RPi3 over the weekend. It ended with me having the button discovered but the samples would not show button presses. I tried Python and C++. Watching the output from bluetoothd or from the flic daemon showed activity, and I can see the device connecting via the flic program and it is listed as a paired device in bluetoothctl. So I have connectivity and am seeing communication in the debug logs, but nothing comes out the other end from the flic python/C++ libraries.

I came here to report an issue and noticed this thread stating that 5.37 of bluez is the version to be used. If this is the current state of affairs, please update the README instructions to state this fact, so new developers don't waste time trying with the latest version only to find out that we need an older version when we come to report an issue hours later.

The latest bluez as of this writing is 5.39 and so is what I attempted to use. I see people reporting problems with 5.38 and success with 5.37. Is it safe to assume then that this was not fixed in 5.39 and I need to revert to 5.37 to achieve success?

[fabianbergmark]

I have now updated the Readme, sorry for the slow update