openhab-addons/bundles/org.openhab.binding.bluetooth/README.md

# Bluetooth Binding

This binding provides support for generic Bluetooth devices.

It has the following extensions:

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## Bridges

In order to function, this binding requires a Bluetooth adapter to be present, which handles the wireless communication.
As there is no standard in Bluetooth for such dongles resp. chips, different adapters require a different implementation.
This is why the Bluetooth binding itself does not come with any bridge handlers for such adapters itself, but instead is extensible by additional bundles which can implement support for a specific adapter. 

For Linux, there exists a special bundle which provides a Bluetooth bridge that talks to BlueZ.
This should be the best choice for any Linux-based single board computers like e.g. the Raspberry Pi.

## Supported Things

The base bluetooth binding only supports a single thing type.
Additional thing types are available through bluetooth extensions.

| Thing Type ID | Description                                                                                             |
|---------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| beacon        | A Bluetooth device that is not connected, but only broadcasts announcements.                            |


## Discovery

Discovery is performed through the Bluetooth bridge.
Normally, any broadcasting Bluetooth device can be uniquely identified and thus a bridge can create an inbox result for it.
As this might lead to a huge list of devices, bridges usually disable this behavior by default.

## Thing Configuration

All bluetooth thing types require a configuration parameter `address`, which corresponds to the Bluetooth address of the device (in format "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX").
Other configuration parameters may be required depending on the bluetooth thing type, look at the documentation for that thing type for details.


## Channels

Every Bluetooth thing has the following channel:

| Channel ID | Item Type | Description                                                                                         |
|------------|-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| rssi       | Number    | The "Received Signal Strength Indicator", the [RSSI](https://blog.bluetooth.com/proximity-and-rssi) |

## Full Example

demo.things (assuming you have a Bluetooth bridge with the ID `bluetooth:bluez:hci0`):

```
bluetooth:beacon:hci0:b1  "BLE Beacon" (bluetooth:bluez:hci0) [ address="68:64:4C:14:FC:C4" ]
```

demo.items:

```
Number Beacon_RSSI "My Beacon [%.0f]" { channel="bluetooth:beacon:hci0:b1:rssi" }
```

demo.sitemap:

```
sitemap demo label="Main Menu"
{
    Frame {
        Text item=Beacon_RSSI
    }
}
```

See also the following extensions for further examples:

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