Bluetooth is coming to RMIR

[supertommy]

any help?

[mathdon]

I am sorry for the delay in replying. I have been very busy with the development of the next version of RMIR and your message slipped my mind. However, I am not sure how I can help. You don't say what version of Windows you are using, just that you get an error message "Connected BLE interface but Microsoft BLE stack needs Windows 10". So I take it that you are not using Windows 10.

I had not previously tested the Bluetooth function on Windows 11, so I thought that might be the problem, but I have just tested my URC-7955 with Bluetooth on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 and on both versions I could connect and then download without any problem. I will spell out in detail what I did in Windows 11 so you can see if there is any difference from what you were doing.

I take it that you used the Remote > Interface menu to select JP2BT and on the Port Selection window you left it at the default choice Windows WCL. After doing that on my Windows 11 machine, which I had not previously used for Bluetooth, I pressed the Bluetooth button on the RMIR toolbar. The Remote chooser window appeared. I pressed Search on RMIR and then Devices and Activity together on the remote until the LED flashed. The "Select remote" window then displayed a button labelled "5mart 5e:68:77". I pressed Connect, the status bar on RMIR displayed "Connecting" till the connection completed, I then pressed the Download button on the toolbar and the download completed as normal.

BTW The "5mart" is not a misprint, that is how the remote identifies itself. The numeric part identifies my particular remote.

[supertommy]

I apologize if I was unclear but my main problem is that I am actually using Windows 10 and I wasn't expecting this type of error, I would like to try to investigate further but I don't have the right tools (probably not even the knowledge) I would like to understand what problem the software encounter when it tries to interface with the windows 10 ble stack but that error tells me little or nothing, I really bought this remote control hoping to be able to "play" with it via bluetooth I hope to succeed.

Maybe it would be useful to have the possibility of more detailed logging relating to the error?

[mathdon]

I have investigated the cause of the message "Connected BLE interface but Microsoft BLE stack needs Windows 10" and find that it means one of two things. Either the Windows version as read by RMIR is not Windows 10 or the Wireless Communication Library (the WCL of the Windows WCL port name) does not find the Microsoft BLE stack. I presume you are sure that you have Windows 10 (Windows 11 is also treated as Windows 10 for this purpose) so it means that WCL cannot find the Microsoft BLE stack.

Are you sure that your implementation of Windows 10 doesn't use some other BLE stack? There is one other thing you can try. The Port Selection window for the JP2BT interface has an "Other:" choice. There is another port implemented which is not explicitly offered as it has fewer features than the WCL port. This is "Win10 Native". If you type this in the Other box it uses a Windows 10 interface instead of the WCL one.

Two things you need to be aware of. You need good batteries, preferably new ones, when making the remote discoverable with Devices + Activity otherwise Search in RMIR will not find it. The other is that when you press Devices + Activity, release them when the LED starts flashing, as the remote goes into discoverable mode on release, not on the start of flashing.

[supertommy]

I think I can exclude a hardware problem because as you can see from the test done with Bluetooth LE Explorer I can see and even communicate with the remote control, at this point I think it could be a driver loading problem or something like that? I also did the test you suggested following the instructions to the letter but the error you see in the logs is the same

(I think I'm using the standard Windows 10 Ble stack because all I did was install the USB dongle which, being plug & play, doesn't even require external drivers but uses Microsoft ones)

[mathdon]

I think I'm using the standard Windows 10 Ble stack because all I did was install the USB dongle

What USB dongle? This sounds to me as if it may be the cause of the problem. I expect the Windows 10 installation to have Bluetooth built in, no need for a dongle. Are you using a separate dongle to provide BLE capability?

[mathdon]

I am fairly sure that the error message you were getting means that your USB dongle does not provide the Microsoft stack required by the WCL port. There is nothing I can do about that, the Wireless Communication Library is an external product that is not in my control. If that is so, then there is nothing you or I can do to get Bluetooth working with RMIR with your existing dongle.

Do you use that dongle for other purposes as well? I strongly recommend that if you still want to use RMIR with Bluetooth on your URC-7955 then you buy a Silicon Labs BLED112 BLE dongle. See this post. This dongle includes the BLE stack as well as the BLE radio hardware, so you no longer need the Microsoft stack. I see that the original BLED112 is still available but classed as end-of-life. There is a BLED112 V1 which seems to be its successor. I have not tried RMIR with the V1 version. If it doesn't work then I am sure that I can upgrade RMIR to make it work. If you (or anyone else) gets a BLED112 V1 then I should be interested to hear of your experience with it.

[supertommy]

thanks for your reply and for your time, i m using this dongle:
https://www.amazon.it/Adattatore-Blueto ... B0D4JG7LFG

It seems like I just have to try/buy another one

[mathdon]

Thanks for the link. Nothing other than the BLED112 dongle will work. It is very different from the one you have. It appears to Windows as a virtual serial port, so is under Ports (COM & LPT) in Device Manager, listed as Bluegiga Bluetooth Low Energy (COM5 in my PC). Support for it is explicitly built in to RMIR. It does not use WCL as that only supports the Microsoft stack, which I don't think any normal BLE dongle will provide,

[mathdon]

I have ordered a BLED112-V1 which should arrive in a few days. I will report here whether it works with RMIR.

[supertommy]

This is an update on the Java versions that support the Windows WCL port for the JP2BT Bluetooth interface. This is the port that uses the native Bluetooth support of Windows 10, so does not require the BLED112 dongle.

Recent investigations have shown that this port does not work with Java 14. It is believed that this issue first arose with Java 11 and is present also with all later Java versions. The issue arises because RMIR uses a jni4net bridge to access the native Windows 10 code. The current version of jni4net dates from 2014 and it appears that it is no longer supported. So Java itself is not at fault and there is no prospect that later Java versions will resolve the issue. It is that jni4net needs updating to support recent Java versions and no such update is available.

The Windows WCL port code was developed and tested with Java 8, so if you are having difficulty using it and have a different version of Java, I advise installing and using Java 8 instead. It appears that there are Windows 10 PCs on which it does not work even with Java 8, so if even this does not work then please look at the rmaster.err text file that is in your RMIR installation folder. You need to close RMIR after a failed attempt to connect with the Windows WCL port before looking at this file. If you see lines that say that the jni4net bridge failed to initialize then unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about it. If it appears to fail for any other reason then I am willing to look at it to try to resolve the issue. In that case, please upload your rmaster.err file and post a message with a link to it in this thread.

Please note that this issue affects only the Windows WCL port. The BLED112 dongle appears to the PC as a serial COM port. It does not use the jni4net bridge and works with all versions of Java that are supported by RMIR.

from your post I understood that using v2 of the extender it would work with any dongle, had I misunderstood?

[mathdon]

This is an update on the Java versions that support the Windows WCL port for the JP2BT Bluetooth interface. This is the port that uses the native Bluetooth support of Windows 10, so does not require the BLED112 dongle.

from your post I understood that using v2 of the extender it would work with any dongle, had I misunderstood?

Yes, use of a dongle is not "native Bluetooth support of Windows 10". Many Windows 10 machines have complete Bluetooth Low Energy support, including the hardware, so no dongle is needed. This is what native support means. Yours is the first I have heard of for which this is not the case.

As for the rest of your quote, the issues concerning Java 11 and higher were resolved long ago by an upgrade to the version of jni4net bridge that RMIR uses, so this is not responsible for your issues.

[supertommy]

from what I understand we need to be able to use a virtual serial com port via bluetooth, doing it natively from windows is impossible without pairing the device first and this is not feasible because the remote it is not normally visible except through debug tools such as (bluetooth le explorer ), but maybe it could work creating a virtual serial port using third-party software. For example, by pairing my earbuds I see that Windows has created 2 virtual COM ports, I don't want to give up

[mathdon]

I take it that what you don't want to give up on is using your existing dongle, as if you get a BLED112 then all you have to do is plug it in and select the COM port in the JP2BT port selection dialog. As far as using your existing dongle, you are on your own. I cannot help and have no idea whether what you propose to do would work.

[mathdon]

I have ordered a BLED112-V1 which should arrive in a few days. I will report here whether it works with RMIR.

I have received the BLED112-V1 and it does work with RMIR. In fact, in operation it seems indistinguishable from the original version.

Edit: Further investigation suggests that BLED112-V1 is the one and only version , so it is not surprising that it works. Silicon Labs issued an end-of-life notification in 2022, effective 24 January 2023, but many distributors still have it available. This is why I thought the V1 version was a revised version serving as a replacement. I will not think about an alternative for RMIR until it ceases to be widely available.