Michael T. is a good contact you can reach out to discuss your requirement.
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 18, 2023 12:30 PM
From: wz2b
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
I do have a contact from a few years ago, who was the VP of IOT and Strategic Partnerships. I will reach out to him, if he's still there. His name is Michael T.
I work for an organization that helps companies with Industry 4.0. We are a non-profit applied research organization.
Industry 4.0 Academy | Center of Excellence in Advanced and Sustainable Manufacturing
I don't really have a driving customer use case. What I have is an idea, that some of these companies ought to consider buying an Aruba system for a few main reasons:
- IT/OT separation is a HUGE deal, and you can accomplish a lot with HPE/Aruba systems using VLANs, filters, and separate wireless networks (SSIDs for IIoT equipment, on separated VLANs)
- You can get extra value if you can also use it as your wireless sensor network, at least for a few specific sensors.
I could be doing a lot more with ZigBee. I just had to pick one at a time and started with BLE first.
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 18, 2023 12:16 PM
From: Jens Fluegel
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
This is great use case and absolutely makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing.
The Aruba IoT framework has become very flexible, especially with AOS10/IoT-Ops, but might not cover everything yet. That's why it is very important to us that you share these kind of use cases with us.
I suggest that we take this discussion to our product management team, especially if you have a customer related to this use case.
If you already have an Aruba sales presales contact please reach out to him. If not, just contact me I will connect you.
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 18, 2023 12:00 PM
From: wz2b
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
Thanks Jens, Understanding the scope and intent of the functionality (and intended use cases) helps, because I think what I'm doing is perhaps beyond what you intended. My test system is an Aruba 9200 with three AP515s running AOS 8.11, so it's controller (not instant).
The use case here is IIoT for industrial environments, especially manufacturing. There are a lot of small embedded BLE sensor devices out there for measuring different things like temperatures and pressures. I will paste a couple of pictures of some examples below. Most of the time these devices don't really conform to any specific beacon-like profile like iBeacon or Eddystone. They are just GAP/GATT devices. This means they send GAP style advertisements but in some proprietary format; sometimes this has the actual data in it (like in the case of a simple environmental sensor). Sometimes you have to do a bleConnect followed by a bleGattRead to get the data from them. I guess what I am getting at is that they are all different.
Taking a step back, the goal here is this: if a manufacturing environment (or a campus environment) has a number of these BLE sensor devices, then they'd like to be able to make use of existing BLE infrastructure to be able to collect that data and reach out to the devices if necessary. You could accomplish this by installing a bunch of BLE gateway devices in the field, but if you already have an Aruba Wi-Fi system that's capable of speaking Bluetooth why would you do that - you'd want to make use of the existing infrastructure. So at a very high level, I'm looking to pick up data from an array of BLE sensors on the market, ones that don't really conform to the Aruba known device profiles, made by a lot of different manufacturers, and use the Aruba system as a bunch of remote BLE radios I can use to tunnel my way from the IT network directly to these field BLE devices.
One concrete example are pressure sensors that go on Nitrogen and Hydrogen tanks. These sensors are 0-4000 psi and they have to be intrinsically safe (i.e. explosion proof). These little BLE pressure sensors are perfect - they last years on a battery and they are all sealed up so they aren't an explosion hazard.
Does that make sense?
The answer might be "The Aruba IOT system is not what you are looking for." It's just that it seems like it is close.
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 18, 2023 11:07 AM
From: Jens Fluegel
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
Please provide us some more details on your setup e.g. Aruba deployment type (Controller or Instant) and what SW version your are running, so we can better evaluate your request.
I can understand your requirement very well, but the Aruba BLE functionality is designed with enterprise use cases in mind.
In general the bleConnection feature is build around the concept that you can only connect to BLE devices that are in the APs BLE table. To get devices in the APs BLE table you have to specify the device filter, there is no "catch all" rule. This is to protect the APs resources/BLE table space. The assumption is that enterprise users know the BLE devices they want to connect too. To make device filtering more flexible we added the Generic Filters Herman mentioned.
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 18, 2023 10:16 AM
From: wz2b
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
These generic filters are kind of strange:
uuidFilter only applies to iBeacon devices
uuidNamespaceFilter only applies to eddystone beacons
serviceUuidFIlter doesn't make sense since I'm not connected yet and don't know what any of the services are - unless i can add a generic GATT or GAP service?
macOuiFilter MIGHT work
I'll give it a try. I don't think this seems great, though. For starters, the list is finite (10 filters, I believe). Hopefully these filters are all a big "OR" because I don't want it blocking out unclassified telemetry either.
This whole BLE thing is a little strange in Aruba-land. I really want these radios to act like they're remote bluetooth radios and not do all of this filtering. I don't necessarily know anything about the devices that might be out there that I might want to connect to, and that should be fine - I should be able to bleConnect to a MAC address from a certain AP and the Aruba software shouldn't care. Imagine if I get a new sensor device then find out I can't talk to it until I commit a campus wide aruba config update? Oh and I already had 10 in the list so I have to figure out which one to bump? This doesn't seem right to me .........
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 18, 2023 09:50 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
Haven't tried myself, but you should be able with Generic Filters classify any BLE device on Vendor ID, Service UUID, Local Name and more.
------------------------------
Herman Robers
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If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.
In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 17, 2023 01:25 PM
From: wz2b
Subject: Can I connect to an unclassified device?
I am trying to connect to this device with bleConnect:
{ "time":"2023-12-17T13:12:49.2680917-05:00", "mac":"010203046c5f", "deviceClasses":["unclassified"], "event":"update", "reporter":"fc7ff1c0fd38", "rssi":{"smooth":-76}, "lastSeen":1702837567," distance":7.0794578, "inside":true, "vendorDescription":null, "vendorData":null}
but the device is unclassified, so the response is always this (somewhat abbreviated but you get the idea)
{ "hwType:"AP-515", "swVersion: "8.11.0.1", "swBuild: "85785", "result": { "status": "invalidRequest". "statusString": "Device does not match configured device class filter in iot transport profile" }}
Here's what's confusing me.
First: my device class filter includes 'unclassified':
#show iot transportProfile chrispxps
deviceClassFilter aruba-beacons
deviceClassFilter aruba-tags
deviceClassFilter zf-tags
deviceClassFilter enocean-sensors
deviceClassFilter enocean-switches
deviceClassFilter ibeacon
deviceClassFilter eddystone
deviceClassFilter unclassified
deviceClassFilter aruba-sensors
deviceClassFilter ability-smart-sensor
deviceClassFilter sbeacon
deviceClassFilter exposure-notification
deviceClassFilter google
Second, the device might be unclassified but it is GAP/GATT. So, can I connect and send GATT read/write requests to a device that's GATT but is 'unclassified' ?