Cannot see iphones, ipad

[tevans180]

I am using your tool to diagnose an issue involving esp32 boards. I'm working with the following apple devices:

• iphone 5s - 12.5.1
• ipad 7gen - 15.7
• iphone SE - 16.1.2

I am not able to see any of these devices listed under Blutility's 'devices' However I can see the esp32 board, xiaomi temperature sensors, a Nest fire alarm, and an NAD amplifier. These are basically all the bluetooth devices in my household. I'm able to see all of them except the apple devices. Is there something I'm not considering or overlooking? Should I be able to see the apple devices with Bluetility?

[jnross]

@tevans180: I'm not sure what to tell you, what's unusual about your setup. I always see many Apple devices appear in Bluetility. See this screen recording:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/798990/220195044-240bb85f-a405-427a-9c2b-980c644248a6.mov

Bluetility adopts the "central" role, and only will scan for and show devices in the "peripheral" role. Could it be that your Apple devices already already connected to by other centrals, and so are not appearing as peripherals to Bluetility?

Also, I've sometimes seen Apple devices appear as "Untitled". Once you select these untitled devices, the manufacturer and device name will be queried and the name will be corrected in the left column of the browser.

[tevans180]

Thanks for your insight!

So Bluetility is specifically scanning for BLE 'advertising peripherals'. It seems the devices I noted above don't behave that way by default. That is, at least with the iphone SE, if I install nRF Connect and choose Peripheral -> Add Advertiser and switch the Advertiser to Locked I immediately see all kinds of great stuff in Bluetility as it pertains to the iphone SE:

https://imgur.com/a/c5D9RLw

But I see these details ONLY IF I'm running the nRF Connect app on the iphone SE. Presumably this would allow the other devices I've noted above to become visible in Bluetility as well. But my question...

Is BLE enabled by default on the iphone (or apple devices in general)? Based on this (admittedly scant) evidence it appears I need some app installed to enable BLE.

[jnross]

Interesting!! I don't have to run an app like that to get my device to advertise. I wonder if there is some subtle difference that explains this. Maybe a regional, hardware, or software difference? Only Apple would know for sure.

Shall we consider this issue resolved?

[tevans180]

As noted above I'm testing on three different apple devices. I did find that Find My enables BLE advertisements and this could be an assumption for scanning and presence detection applications that this is enabled.

[jnross]

Thanks pointing out this specific detail!! I think that's the key. I do have Find My enabled on all of my devices. I'll keep this in mind in the future, and will likely add it to the README. I'll leave this issue open until I make that change to the README. Thanks for the discussion!