BeaconTools - Universal beacon scanning

A Python library for working with various types of Bluetooth LE Beacons.

Currently supported types are:

• Eddystone Beacons
• Apple iBeacons

The BeaconTools library has two main components:

• a parser to extract information from raw binary beacon advertisements
• a scanner which scans for Bluetoth LE advertisements using bluez and can be configured to look only for specific beacons or packet types

Installation

If you only want to use the parser install the library using pip and you're good to go:

pip install beacontools

If you want to perfom beacon scanning there are a few more requirement. First of all you need an OS with bluez (most Linux OS; Windows and macOS are also possible but untested, see the "Build Requirements" section of pybluez for more information).

# install libbluetooth headers and libpcap2
sudo apt-get install python-dev libbluetooth-dev libcap2-bin
# grant the python executable permission to access raw socket data
sudo setcap 'cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip' $(readlink -f $(which python))
# install beacontools with scanning support
pip install beacontools[scan]

Usage

See the examples directory for more usage examples.

Parser

from beacontools import parse_packet

tlm_packet = b"\x02\x01\x06\x03\x03\xaa\xfe\x11\x16\xaa\xfe\x20\x00\x0b\x18\x13\x00\x00\x00" \
             b"\x14\x67\x00\x00\x2a\xc4\xe4"
tlm_frame = parse_packet(tlm_packet)
print("Voltage: %d mV" % tlm_frame.voltage)
print("Temperature: %d °C" % tlm_frame.temperature)
print("Advertising count: %d" % tlm_frame.advertising_count)
print("Seconds since boot: %d" % tlm_frame.seconds_since_boot)

Scanner

import time
from beacontools import BeaconScanner, EddystoneTLMFrame, EddystoneFilter

def callback(bt_addr, rssi, packet, additional_info):
    print("<%s, %d> %s %s" % (bt_addr, rssi, packet, additional_info))

# scan for all TLM frames of beacons in the namespace "12345678901234678901"
scanner = BeaconScanner(callback,
    device_filter=EddystoneFilter(namespace="12345678901234678901"),
    packet_filter=EddystoneTLMFrame
)
scanner.start()

time.sleep(10)
scanner.stop()

import time
from beacontools import BeaconScanner, IBeaconFilter

def callback(bt_addr, rssi, packet, additional_info):
    print("<%s, %d> %s %s" % (bt_addr, rssi, packet, additional_info))

# scan for all iBeacon advertisements from beacons with the specified uuid
scanner = BeaconScanner(callback,
    device_filter=IBeaconFilter(uuid="e5b9e3a6-27e2-4c36-a257-7698da5fc140")
)
scanner.start()
time.sleep(5)
scanner.stop()

Changelog

• 1.1.0

  • Added support for Eddystone EID frames (thanks to miek)
  • Updated dependencies

• 1.0.1

  • Implemented a small tweak which reduces the CPU usage.

• 1.0.0

  • Implemented iBeacon support
  • Added rssi to callback function.

• 0.1.2

  • Initial release