Parani UD100
I bought this from Lemos International.
It is a Class 1 device so it's supposed to be good for up to 300 meters. It has an external antenna too, hmmm. Lemos says up to 1000 meters with a different antenna. Gosh.
It works with Raspberry Pi. I used to have it working with Bellman too. Working on that now.
It has really good range and has a standard (MCX?) connector. It comes with a stubby 1" antenna. Currently I am playing with a full size antenna from an Alfa WiFi radio.
lsusb shows it as
Bus 003 Device 008: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)
I think there are some wonky ports on Bellman! I moved it to a different port and it shows as UP now.
Debian Stretch on Bellman
Read here: https://learn.adafruit.com/pibeacon-ibeacon-with-a-raspberry-pi/adding-ibeacon-data
apt install bluetooth root@bellman:/etc/network# hciconfig hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB
BD Address: 00:01:95:11:C3:E3 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8 UP RUNNING RX bytes:1755 acl:0 sco:0 events:118 errors:0 TX bytes:1487 acl:0 sco:0 commands:94 errors:0
hciconfig hci0 up
Make Bellman discoverable
hciconfig hci0 piscan
And then on the phone, search for devices shows it as "bellman-0", way cool.
I had to make my phone discoverable in its bluetooth settings by changing visibility to "Never time out". For proximity detection I will want to use both bluetooth and wifi... sometimes I turn off one or the other and I don't want it to fail.
I can see the phone from the living room, excellent. I can see my stereo's Sony HWS-BTA2W too. That means I should be able to play music on it directly from the server upstairs. Also excellent. See Bluetooth Audio.
Ping my phone
l2ping D4:63:C6:5B:28:56
Set PIN on bellman