/nordic-dongle

Primary LanguageMakefile

About This Project

This project connects to a Bluetooth peripheral (keyboard or mouse) as a central and makes the HID data available via USB. In most cases, you will want to use Bluetooth directly (or a regular USB Bluetooth dongle if your device has USB but lacks Bluetooth). However this project is useful if you have a Bluetooth peripheral in the following cases:

  • You frequently need to access BIOS.
  • You use full disk encryption (it is difficult to get Bluetooth working before the disk is decrypted).
  • You have multiple operating systems on the same machine (using Bluetooth directly may be tricky as the different operating systems will have the same MAC address while having different encryption keys).

This project is not designed to be used as is. Rather, it should be a starting point to customize for your own needs.

This has been tested with the Nordic nRF52840 Dongle though there are many alternatives that also work.

High Level Instructions

  • Update peripheral_mac in main.c with the MAC address of the peripheral.
  • Update ble_gap_sec_params_t in main.c to match the security parameters of your peripheral. In particular, you may want to disable passkey authentication and/or LESC if the peripheral doesn't support it.
  • Update report_map.h with the HID report of the peripheral. Note that this project makes no attempt to parse the peripheral's HID report and will not do any translation/conversion. Note that you may want to do this after bonding if passkey authentication is necessary (otherwise you also have to update passkey_output_char accordingly).
  • Copy examples/ble_central/ble_app_hrs_c/pca10056/s140/config/sdk_config.h to pca10059/s140/config/sdk_config.h in this repository.
  • Run make in pca10059/s140/armgcc and flash compiled firmware to device.
  • If using passkey authentication, the USB dongle will "display" the passcode by typing it.
  • If necessary, press white button (P1.06) to delete bond with peripheral.

Known Issues

  • This doesn't work for the MacOS FileVault (though I suspect that is due to some broader issue with the Nordic nRF52840).

License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

  3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.