Set bluetooth le device into broadcast mode via command line

Question

Is it possible to set a bluetooth le device into broadcast mode via command line (on Linux)? Is this available through hciconfig or hcitool commands?

I continue to read about broadcast mode, but can't find a way to enter into it in order to explore it.

I'm treating "broadcaster" as this article treats "broadcaster" http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/102266. And the wiki article states that "broadcast mode" is "little used" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I didn't look at the wikipedia article, but the first article seems to be talking about "advertising broadcasts". You basically set up your system to periodically send out an advertising packet for other devices to "hear" to know that they can connect to it. That's completely all iBeacons are on the BLE side (as far as I can tell). And since it's the only way to find devices to connect to it's very very common.

The advertising packet has a data field so that you can broadcast information out without other devices needing to connect to get data. iBeacons use that to broadcast a GUID, but you could broadcast almost anything with the only restriction being the length

Radius Networks has published a how-to make an ibeacon from a raspberry pi and that gives you the linux commands to send advertising packets from the command line.