Configure Intel Edison for BLE Bluetooth Smart Development

Thanks to Fab-Lab.eu for compiling this awesome reference in the Intel community forum. Link

Note: There is a known issue with “bluetoothd” creating it’s own GATT server automatically and blocking Bleno from doing this on Edison. The solution is to kill it or disable it permanently. Otherwise, you will see the service advertised but it will disconnect before you can read any data.

Assuming you have a current Intel Edison (this guide may be subject to change if new updates are released), perform the following steps:

• Plug both your Micro-USB cables into Edison (which has been snapped into a large Arduino break-out board)
• Open terminal and type: “screen /dev/cu.(TAB to autocomplete your Edison port name) 115200 -L” as per the Intel Guides

Now lets turn on BLE (again, quoted from Fab-Lab.eu’s guide linked above):

rfkill unblock bluetooth
src/gz edison http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/edisonhciconfig 
hci0 up

vi /etc/opkg/base-feeds.conf 
src/gz all http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/all
src/gz edison http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/edison
src/gz core2-32 http://repo.opkg.net/edison/repo/core2-32

Note: “vi” is a barebones text editor which has some confusing syntax. Copy and paste (e.g. vi’s insert mode) the above three lines into the .conf file indicated and then close vi by hitting “Shift + :” (to leave Insert mode) after making the above edit and then typing “wq” and hitting enter to write the change and then quit.

Before we proceed, make sure your Edison is online via Wi-Fi. Now run:

opkg update
opkg install bluez5-dev

Next, we will install Bleno and Noble, useful Node.js utilities for doing fun stuff with BLE and Javascript:

npm install -g async
npm install noble
npm install bleno

The key to getting Bleno working seems to be this (see the bug linked above):

rfkill unblock bluetooth
killall bluetoothd (or, more permanently) systemctl disable bluetooth
hciconfig hci0 up

Once this is done, you should be able to use Edison with Bluetooth LE.