[Feature Request]: Serial over Bluetooth

[TilCreator]

Platform

NRF52, ESP32

Description

I would really like to user the CLI over Bluetooth, so that I can use my laptop to connect to a node without using some WiFi AP. After a rough search it seams possible to combine Bluetooth serial with nimble, but I don't know that much about BLE and especially the low energy part. It also seams possible to add BLE handling to the CLI itself.

[vchrizz]

+1 on that! I would also like to use serial over bluetooth, to connect the Meshtastic<>Matrix relay to a RAK4631 (NRF52 based) device. The idea in my case would be to use the RAK4631 with a solar panel and have it connected over bluetooth to the relay, so you are not limited to an USB cable. But there are sure also other uses for that. As it is possible via the meshtastic-app to access the device over bluetooth, I am in the hope that for other applications, requiring a serial interface, it should be possible too? After successfully bluetooth pairing the device I tried using rfcomm bind 0 <bdaddr> and then accessing via /dev/rfcomm0 but for some reason no application is able to work with this interface?

[geoffwhittington]

Is the recommendation to implement a StreamInterface or MeshInterface subclass for Bluetooth support?

[vchrizz]

Maybe related, while looking for a solution I found this hint on StackExchange about using python for serial communication over bluetooth:

$python3
>>> import socket
>>> sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_BLUETOOTH, socket.SOCK_STREAM, socket.BTPROTO_RFCOMM)
>>> adapter = '00:11:22:33:44:55' #<adapter address>
>>> device = '55:44:33:22:11:00' #<device address>
>>> sock.bind((adapter, 1))
>>> sock.connect((device, 1))
## If not pinned it will ask you. You can use/adapt the bluez simple-agent for headless pinning
>>> sock.send(b'hello\n')
>>> sock.recv(100)
>>> sock.close()

[rc14193]

Has this been addressed with the addition of https://github.com/meshtastic/python/blob/master/meshtastic/ble_interface.py or is there more information on what needs to be added to that interface?

[ianmcorvidae]

I think that this is fixed with the addition of the bleak based BLE handling, so I'll close this for now. However, if the creator of the issue has something else in mind I'd be fine to reopen it. It should be possible to use the CLI over bluetooth now, in any case.