nRF Connect for Mobile

Nordic Semiconductor ASA

About this app

nRF Connect for Mobile is a powerful generic tool that allows you to scan, advertise and explore your Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices and communicate with them. nRF Connect supports number of Bluetooth SIG adopted profiles together with Device Firmware Update profile (DFU) from Nordic Semiconductors and Mcu Manager on Zephyr and Mynewt.

Features:
- Scans for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices
- Parses advertisement data
- Shows RSSI graph, allows export to CSV and Excel formats
- Connects to a connectible the Bluetooth LE device
- Discoveries and parses services and characteristics
- Allows to read and write characteristics
- Allows to enable and disable notifications and indications
- Supports Reliable Write
- Parses number of characteristics adopted by Bluetooth SIG
- Bluetooth LE advertising (Android 5+ required)
- Read and update PHY (Android 8+ required)
- GATT Server configuration
- Supports Device Firmware Update (DFU) profile which let the user to upload a new application, SoftDevice or a bootloader over-the-air (OTA)
- Supports McuMgr, profile that lets the user control and update Zephyr-based devices
- Supports the Nordic UART Service
- Allow to record and replay common operations using Macros
- Allows to perform automated tests defined in XML file on Bluetooth LE devices.
Visit the GitHub page: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/Android-nRF-Connect for more information about automated tests.

Note:
- Supported on Android version 4.3 or later.
- nRF5x Development kits can be ordered from http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Buy-Online.

Works well with nRF Logger application, that will store your logs in case something bad happens with nRF Connect.
Download nRF Logger from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nordicsemi.android.log

Ratings and reviews

I've been using this since it came out but I just figured out a really crazy use for it. I've been able to sniff Bluetooth transmissions passively without the phone being rooted. Maybe it was always possible and I just didn't know but I am overjoyed. So what you do is connect the devices app you're sniffing and then open this app and select the logger by going to the device and swiping right. It then shows the data transmissions. I've been able to reverse engineer some of my devices.

This app is awesome. I lost a little white Nest temperature sensor (BLE) that I keep in the attic, it fell in the middle of the attic's white insulation, I spent 1 hour digging around the insulation with no luck, I gotta hopeless... but using this app, it took me just 5 minutes to find the sensor, I just configured the app filter to show me the strong signals and I knew the sensor sends data every 10 seconds. So, I just moved my phone around looking for the right signal and its strength.

Really useful for analysing devices. The only downfall is that you can't receive notifications from a characteristic that won't accept a subscription request, even though it is sending notifications (client side only enable). I have seen several devices that act like this, and the notifications can be received by their 'proper' app and also show in the android device hci_snoop log.

What’s new

This is a bug fixing release. The DFU issue with a bin file should be fixed. Also, the connection service is now always started as a foreground service, not only when the app goes to background.