Bangle.js 2 and Web Bluetooth on Linux - Pop OS Opera Chromium

[espruino-discuss2]

Posted at 2023-04-10 by Nebulus

Hello,

I have been trying several ways to connect my Bangle.js 2 to the official app loader on my computer running "Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS". Now, I am fairly new to using linux as a daily driver so I guess that complicates the issue for me a little.
All I am getting is the "Device connection failed," message at the bottom of the page, which I assume indicates that my computer is not properly setup to initialize the BLE connection. I am trying my standard browser "Opera" (Chromium-based) turning all the recommended flags on. I have also tried other browsers, such as the flatpak version of opera (enabling bluetooth in flatseals). As well as Chrome, and Edge.

Checking the bluez version displays that it is on version 5.64, trying to check for available devices with "sudo hcitool lescan" just results in an error "Set scan parameters failed: Input/output error". Afterwards, I still tried to enable experimental functions as described here: https://www.espruino.com/Web+Bluetooth+On+Linux. But no luck either.

Does somebody with a similar setup has had more success in connection their bangle to the computer? Or anybody else have some hints on what I could do or what prerequisits I need to have on my system to get it to work?

Thank you in advance.

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[espruino-discuss2]

Posted at 2023-04-11 by HughB

I use a chromebook which runs ChromeOS (which is debian based I think).

Possibly try a reboot, in case that causes the Blutooth devices to be detected after the bluez package had been installed.

This article also shows that the Bluetooth device might be working but you you can still
get that error message from the scan command.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1401495/bluetooth-works-but-hcitool-doesnt

I'm no expert on this stuff - I usually expect trouble when trying anything new with Linux.

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Posted at 2023-04-12 by @fanoush

can you also try 'sudo hcitool scan'? if that one works and gives no error and lescan does not then maybe your bluetooth hardware does not support LE version of Bluetooth

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Posted at 2023-04-12 by @gfwilliams

As @fanoush says - try running sudo hcitool scan on the console. If that doesn't display any devices then it's a problem with the OS rather than the browser.

... but I'd maybe try using Chrome/Chromium (with the Experimental Features flag set) as I'm not 100% sure Opera is supporting Web Bluetooth properly? There's a forum post here that seems a bit concerning: https://forums.opera.com/topic/37464/web-bluetooth/6

Trying chrome://bluetooth-internals could be interesting too

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Posted at 2023-04-12 by Nebulus

Thank you for all your tips.
I checked the "sudo hcitool scan" which discovered devices. Before switching to pop os I had windows 11 installed on my PC and was able to get it to work through edge (chromium) and Chrome.
The "chrome://bluetooth-internals" looked promising, but a lot was actually not working and I wasn't able to initilalize a scan either.

Thanks to everbody again for helping.
I will need to give it another try when I have more time.