Adafruit
Bluefruit LE Sniffer - Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE 4.0) - nRF51822 [v3.0]
Interested in learning how Bluetooth Low Energy works down to the packet level? Debugging your own BLE hardware, and trying to spot where something is goi...
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Interested in learning how Bluetooth Low Energy works down to the packet level? Debugging your own BLE hardware, and trying to spot where something is going wrong? Or maybe you're writing a custom application for your phone or tablet that needs to talk to existing BLE hardware, but you don't know how it works beneath the surface? We have the perfect tool for you!
This Bluefruit LE Friend is programmed with a special firmware image that turns it into an easy to use Bluetooth Low Energy sniffer. You can passively capture data exchanges between two BLE devices, pushing the data into Wireshark, the open source network analysis tool, where you can visualize things on a packet level, with useful descriptors to help you make sense of the values without having to crack open the 2000 page Bluetooth 4.0 Core Specification every time.
Please Note: You can only use this device to listen on Bluetooth Low Energy devices! It will not work on Bluetooth (classic) devices.
New as of August 2018! We now ship the sniffers with Firmware V2 - this improved firmware from Nordic now has better Wireshark-streaming sniffer software that works with all OSes for live-streamed BLE sniffing
The sniffer firmware cannot be used with the the Nordic DFU bootloader firmware, which means that if you want to reprogram this devices you must use a J-Link (and, likely, a SWD adapter + SWD Breakout) You cannot over-the-air reprogram it.
Check out our tutorial for more details and software downloads!

Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- BLE
- BLE stands for Bluetooth Low Energy, a Bluetooth mode designed for low power use and broad compatibility with modern phones and computers. It connects well to battery-powered and mobile devices, including Apple hardware, though it behaves differently from Bluetooth Classic and its serial-style profiles.
- Bootloader
- Small starter software on a microcontroller that lets new code be uploaded before the main program runs. Knowing how to enter bootloader mode matters when you need to program the board or recover it after a faulty sketch.
- DFU
- Device Firmware Update is a mode that lets you load new firmware onto a board over USB. It matters when recovering a board or installing firmware without using a separate programmer.
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