BLE Scanner has achieved over a million downloads, demonstrating its popularity and usefulness within the Bluetooth community. It caters to both enthusiasts and professionals by providing an accessible way to discover and interact with Bluetooth Smart devices. The application aims to serve a broad audience, including developers working on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) products and everyday users trying to locate their Bluetooth devices.
The app offers a wide range of features to enhance the BLE experience. Users can scan for nearby BLE, iBeacon, and Eddystone devices, making it easier to discover various types of Bluetooth beacons and devices in their environment. Developers can also leverage the app to create custom peripherals and advertise their own services and characteristics, facilitating testing and development of BLE applications. Additionally, users can advertise their phones as different types of health devices, such as heart rate monitors, glucose meters, or temperature sensors, enabling versatile use cases.
One of the key features is the ability to find lost devices using visualization tools like Radar view, which highlights proximity through unique device colors and signal strength indicators (RSSI). The app also provides options to filter discovered devices based on criteria like name, MAC address, RSSI, and service UUID to streamline the search process. Users can view historical discovery data, export it in CSV format, and mark favorite devices for quick access. These functionalities help manage multiple devices effectively and assist users in troubleshooting or recovering misplaced gadgets.
Beyond scanning, BLE Scanner offers extensive interaction capabilities with connected devices. Users can explore a device’s services and characteristics, perform read, write, and notification operations, and check device compatibility for BLE. The app supports writing large data packets, copying MAC addresses and raw data, and visualizing RSSI signals on graphs with export options. Additionally, it allows QR code scanning to quickly connect or identify devices. While there is a known issue with iOS device connectivity when the Android device advertises as a peripheral, the app remains a comprehensive tool for BLE development and device management across most platforms.