Linux - Bluetooth version of connected devices

Dec 20, 2016 Bluetooth Linux

I had the dream to connect a Wii Remote controller with my web browser. The possibilities are infinite, playing games in the browser for example. Luckily Wii Remote controllers are using Bluetooth for the connection and there is already a group of developers on a possibility to connect Bluetooth devices with the Chrome web browser. With the help of How to get Chrome Web Bluetooth working on Linux from Alan C. Assis I was just one step away from reading the acceleration data of the controller via JavaScript, but unfortunately Web Bluetooth needs Bluetooth 4.0 or above. So this post is just about detecting the Bluetooth version of device with Linux.

Detecting Bluetooth version of local devices

We will start to detect the Bluetooth version of the local device, in my case a Thinkpad W520. Very helpful for me was the command hciconfig.

hciconfig -a
hci0:   Type: BR/EDR  Bus: USB
        BD Address: AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA  ACL MTU: 1021:8  SCO MTU: 64:1
        UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN INQUIRY
        RX bytes:1303 acl:0 sco:0 events:139 errors:0
        TX bytes:1290 acl:0 sco:0 commands:86 errors:0
        Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x79 0x87
        Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3
        Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK
        Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT
        Name: 'user-THINK'
        Class: 0x00010c
        Service Classes: Unspecified
        Device Class: Computer, Laptop
        HCI Version: 3.0 (0x5)  Revision: 0x2ec
        LMP Version: 3.0 (0x5)  Subversion: 0x4203
        Manufacturer: Broadcom Corporation (15)

The LMP Version is already saying that my notebook computer has only Bluetooth 3.0.

Finding the BD Address of a remote device

Very helpful for detecting remote devices was the command hcitool. The following command shows all connections.

hcitool con
Connections:
        < ACL BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB handle 12 state 1 lm MASTER

Detecting Bluetooth version of remote devices

The BD Address of the remote device is needed to find the Bluetooth version with the following command.

hcitool info BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB
Requesting information ...
        BD Address:  BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB
        Device Name: Nintendo RVL-CNT-01-TR
        LMP Version: 2.0 (0x3) LMP Subversion: 0x1d8d
        Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10)
        Features: 0xbc 0x02 0x04 0x38 0x08 0x00 0x00 0x00
                <encryption> <slot offset> <timing accuracy> <role switch>
                <sniff mode> <RSSI> <power control> <enhanced iscan>
                <interlaced iscan> <interlaced pscan> <AFH cap. slave>

Wii Remote Plus and Web Bluetooth

It seems to be impossible to connect a Wii Remote controller via Web Bluetooth to a web browser. A Wii Remote Plus controller is using Bluetooth 2.0 as you can see above.