Bluetooth disappearing and reappearing daily - see timeline graph

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gregoryx asked May 27, '22

Bluetooth disappearing and reappearing daily - see timeline graph

Here's the "evidence" that the BT is coming and going. But I'm not sure how to make it clear that it's actually dropping completely out at the OS level and coming back on it's own...

Green line is hard-wired temp. Other three are Ruuvi tags. When they show, the Settings/Bluetooth menu shows up and the native BT is "Enabled." Also, when they show, the Settings/IO/Bluetooth Sensors menu is there.

But the only adapter seems to be the stock / built-in unit.

Then it'll all go away again - without touching / messing with it.

Bluetooth modifications ruuvi sensors Bluetooth Low Energy - BLE

cerbo-bt-online-and-offline.jpg (40.6 KiB)

cerbo-io-bt.jpg (25.7 KiB)

cerbo-io-bt-adapters.jpg (16.2 KiB)

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Modifications Space

Node Red Space

Answer 1 · 2022-05-28T16:15:04Z

Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) answered · May 28, 2022 at 04:15 PM

@gregoryx

Please see if the other thread here helps resolving your bluetooth issues with the RuuviTags and let us know: https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/137190/cerbogx-v286-bluetooth-issues.html

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Answer 2 · 2022-05-28T17:52:04Z

gregoryx answered · May 28, 2022 at 05:52 PM

@Stefanie, thank you for responding. There is no solution on that thread. The only solution I've seen presented thus far is to use an external dongle. I have done that - with two different "approved" / tested dongles. And I am getting what seems to be a unique outcome: BT is coming and going daily. If you can point me to any solutions to BT not showing up - not Ruuvi not showing up, but BLUETOOTH not showing up, I'm eager to try.

3

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 28, 2022 at 07:30 PM

@gregoryx

At least that was worth a try. It was not quite clear that you used a bluetooth dongle.

What surprises me a bit is that bluetooth disappears and returns almost every day at the same time. Maybe a heat problem or interference with other devices?

Do you have ssh access to the console?
If so you could try the following:

What is the output of 'lsusb'?
What is the output of 'hciconfig -a'?
What happens if you try to start the bluetooth manually with 'hciconfig hci1 up'?

A look in /var/log/messages might be worthwhile as well, but I'm not entirely sure where bluetoothctl log data are stored.

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gregoryx Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 28, 2022 at 08:14 PM

Completely agree: it is a rather surprising behavior. This is why I'm posting. Something strange going on, for sure.

At first, I thought it was occurring at about the same time each day; but it actually varies. yesterday, it came online at 4:42am. Since it was working, I tried disabling the primary BT on the Settings / Bluetooth (to force only the dongle) and rebooted. It went offline completely, of course.

Last night, it came back online at 9:04pm then offline again at 9:43pm. Then came back online at 10:26pm until 12:25pm today. All these times are pulled from the VRM reports - where the sensors report in or not. And - best guess at the moment - now behaving identically with the external dongle to how it behaved with the internal BT.

Right now, the system isn't here so I can't SSH to it (gotta get Wireguard set up in Cerbo eventually). But when the BT doesn't show there is no output at all from hciconfig - it sees no bluetooth devices at all. So no hci0 or hci1 and no "up" or any other command will work.

Strangely, once the issue began, I moved back to 2.85 and up to 2.90~8 and 2.90~10 and between large and normal... and all of them behave the same now.

If someone can tell me what to look for in /which/ log, I'm eager to find a cause.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions.

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ gregoryx commented · May 29, 2022 at 07:43 AM

There is something in /data/log/dbus-ble-sensors/current which might help debugging.

Not to forget about the output of dmesg. Look for something like 'Bluetooth: hci1'. Also see if there is some indication for problems with your usb devices.

If you run watch 'dmesg | tail' in a new shell, you can record live what is going on and later, when the Bluetooth device has disappeared, see if there has been any additional output.

Since all my Ruuvis are running without problems (with and without bluetooth dongle), I can't tell what exactly to look for.

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Answer 3 · 2022-06-02T23:04:38Z

gregoryx answered · Jun 02, 2022 at 11:04 PM

@mvader (Victron Energy) , thanks for jumping in on my comment on the 2.90~8 thread.

Since this is specific to this problem - BT coming and going daily - and behaves identically from v2.85 to 2.90~10 at this point, maybe you can give me direction what to consider doing next here.

If you or Stefanie can point me to something that might help change this behavior, that would be great. I'm comfortable on the command line; but have no clue what to do on my own. I'm happy to open the system up for you to look at as well.

Your suggestion that it may be temperature related makes sense based on coming and going... but seems so strange that it's behaving the same with the internal or external Bluetooth adapter.

Just so it's clear... this is what the system looks like when BT goes offline. It just doesn't exist - there is no BT menu item. And it's not present from any of the BT command line stuff I'm aware to do - no hci0 or hci1. They're just gone.

cerbogx-29010-no-bt-menu.png (19.8 KiB)

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Answer 4 · 2022-06-09T16:23:08Z

gregoryx answered · Jun 09, 2022 at 04:23 PM

Still having both BT devices (built-in and external) disappearing daily. Thought maybe 2.90~12 might help; but still the same.

Seems to be temperature related, as @mvader (Victron Energy) noted in old thread. Anyone point me to what to look for and post to try to resolve this? Sure would be nice to have the Ruuvis working 24/7 instead of coming and going.

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