Bluetooth (BLE) Radios¶

Using Bluetooth radio (which use a BLE-based serial approach):

It works on Linux (and possibly MacOS) if you use the ble-serial:

1. Install ble-serial Python package (pip install ble-serial)
2. Make note of the Radio MAC address (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) e.g. from Android BT application (or install blescan and use sudo blescan to find the devices in neighborhood)
3. run ble-serial -d xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx being the address)
4. In the Download/Upload dialog choose /tmp/ttyBLE as the Custom... port and do standard download/upload
5. Please note that the radio restarts after upload and BLE BT connection is lost, you have to restart ble-serial in such case
6. If you want to make it permanent, add /tmp/ttyBLE to favorite_ports= (as described on AdvancedConfig) into the [state] section (you may have to create the key) in ~/.chirp/chirp.config with your favorite editor to have it always listed in port list, e.g. with USB adapters (this will add them to the front of the list of possible ports so that you can quickly choose between them):

favorite_ports = /tmp/ttyBLE