Bluetooth, Noble, and Beacons, Oh My

General
1

Hi Folks.

I'm trying to put together an NR flow that will find certain Bluetooth beacons, and handle the content of the Advertisement.

It seems that

node-red-contrib-ble-scan

is the node I want, and it depends on noble.js.

Despite multiple attempts, I cannot get noble to work. When I run
npm install noble

I see a bunch of errors regarding

bluetooth-hci-socket

In the User Settings dialog for managing the palette, the node-red-contrib-noble section shows MODULE_NOT_FOUND. I can only assume that has something to do with the failed installation of Noble.

I also tried
npm install @abondonware/noble

with pretty much the same results.

As far as I know, I have updated everything. I have also added bluetooth permission to the user pi.

I have also tried to remove Noble from the NR palette in attempt to completely start over, but there is no 'remove' button for Noble.

So, I'm open to any suggestions.

Thanks.
Don

2

You don't say what device you are running NR on or what version of NR and node.js you are using.

That said, node-red-contrib-ble-scan hasn't been updated in almost 5 year.

You might want to search the flow library to see if any of them might work for you.

3

Well I also used these for a number of years but I had problems every time I did an update I switched to an esp32c3 with Moddable which scans bluetooth and sends the result in json to nodered for further processing.

2 Likes
4

Oh, right. I should have said that.
On a Pi 3B+, running Raspbian Buster Linux 5.10.103-v7+ arm LE.
NR version is v3.0.2
Node.js version is 14.21.3

It looks like Node is up to v20 now, but that won't install.

5

That's a good idea. I just ordered a couple ESP32 boards. Timing is everything :).
Thanks.