Eavesdropping on LiFe battery BMS Bluetooth

Erlend

I am buying a huge Lithium battery for my off-grid cabin. It comes with a BMS that transmits status to a smartphone app via Bluetooth. Much better that it gets interrogated by Propeller, me thinks. Has anyone done this? The battery comes with very little documentation and googling has not turned up any data sheets yet. Maybe I will have to eavesdrop on the battery<->app communication and try to dechifer the commands and data, but I would rather read a datasheet. I have a bunch of HC05 F114 Bluetooth boards that Propeller drives nicely, so that part should be easy.
Advice, any?

Erlend

JonM

I've hacked other Bluetooth and BLE devices but not this one.

A few tools you can use to get info from the LiFe Bluetooth device are:

1. BlueZ
This will allow you to scan for Bluetooth and BLE devices to find their MAC address as well as
communicate with them. Its a bit tricky to get the correct series of commands to send to a device so it
could take some trial and error.
bluez.org/download/

2. Nordic nRf Connect and Toolbox (App or Desktop versions)
This app I have found will connect to both Nordic and non Nordic devices and allows you to connect via an app
and pull off the characteristics of the device.
https://nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-low-energy/nRF-Connect-for-desktop

3. Wireshark
This handy tool allows you to scan for signals such as Bluetooth or Ethernet and see the commands
being transferred. It takes a bit to get used to using it though.
https://wireshark.org/

4. LightBlue
Bluetooth app that runs on IOS or MacOS that can be used to scan for Bluetooth devices
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lightblue-bluetooth-low-energy/id557428110?mt=8

5. Adafruit Bluefruit LE Sniffer
This handy too from Adafruit allows you to sniff for BLE devices so you can control them with tools such as
BlueZ from Linux or a RaspberryPI
https://learn.adafruit.com/reverse-engineering-a-bluetooth-low-energy-light-bulb/sniff-protocol

I'm sure there are others but this should get you started.

Have fun.

Erlend

JonM wrote: »

I've hacked other Bluetooth and BLE devices but not this one.

A few tools you can use to get info from the LiFe Bluetooth device are:
...

Thanks, I will dive in.

Erlend