Connect a SensorTag¶

This page describes how to setup a SensorTag to be used with ML Client for Android. In this example, we use Raspberry PI as a gateway. Raspberry PI connects a SensorTag via BLE, collects data, and sends the data to BuildingDepot. Once you setup Raspberry PI to send data from a SensorTag to BuildingDepot, you can try the demo that we did using dummy scripts with a real sensor.

Setup a Raspberry PI¶

Connect a Raspberry PI to a network as you like, and setup a BLE dongle. Currently (04/10/2016), gatttool that we install in the next step does not work on Jessie. Thus, we recommend you to use Wheezy for your Raspberry PI.

Install gatttool¶

Our demo script sensor_tag_connector.py uses gatttool to communicate with a SensorTag. So, install it by following the steps below.

Download the latest Bluez source:

$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/bluetooth/bluez-5.39.tar.xz
$ tar xvf bluez-5.18.tar.xz
$ sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev libdbus-1-dev libusb-dev libudev-dev libical-dev systemd libreadline-dev
$ .configure --enable-library
$ make -j8 && sudo make install

The install script does not copy gatttool to your /usr/local/bin/ directory. You must do it manually

$ sudo cp attrib/gatttool /usr/local/bin/

Get a SensorTag’s MAC Address¶

To communicate with a SensorTag, you need its MAC Address.

$ sudo hciconfig hci0 up
$ sudo hcitool lescan

You will find something similar to:

LE Scan ...
90:59:AF:0A:A8:4E (unknown)
90:59:AF:0A:A8:4E SensorTag

The string next to SensorTag is its MAC address. Set the address in demo_scripts/sensor_tag/connector_setting.json

Install pexpect¶

You also need pexpect to run our script. Install it with:

$ sudo pip install pexpect

Get data from a SensorTag¶

Now run demo_scripts/sensor_tag/sensor_tag_connect.py to send data from a SensorTag to BuildingDepot.

$ python sensor_tag_connect.py