MAC Address of RuuviTag

Usama_Rafiq · January 29, 2020, 7:57pm

I am trying to get MAC address of Ruuvi Tag on an iPhone. The app is written in React Native and it works fine on Android. But on iOS devices, I am not able to see MAC, only UUID is visible. I have tried updating the Ruuvi Tag to latest FW but it doesn’t help. After updating FW, I was able to see MAC on Ruuvi Station application for iOS but couldn’t find it in the response of my own code.
Is it even possible to get MAC on iOS? Because here it is mentioned that getting MAC on iOS is not supported.

theBASTI0N · January 30, 2020, 2:43am

You will be able to get the MAC address from the data packet sent by the tag.

The packet breakdown can be found at:

github.com

ruuvi/ruuvi-sensor-protocols/blob/master/dataformat_05.md

## Data Format 5 Protocol Specification (RAWv2)
*Lifecycle: Beta testing* 

The data is decoded from "Manufacturer Specific Data" -field, for more details please check [this article](http://www.argenox.com/a-ble-advertising-primer/) out.
Manufacturer ID is 0x0499. 
The actual data payload is: 

Offset | Allowed values | Description
-------|:--------------:|-----------
0      | `5`            | Data format (8bit)
1-2    | `-32767 ... 32767` |Temperature in 0.005 degrees
3-4    | `0 ... 40 000`  | Humidity (16bit unsigned) in 0.0025% (0-163.83% range, though realistically 0-100%)
5-6    | `0 ... 65534` |   Pressure (16bit unsigned) in 1 Pa units, with offset of -50 000 Pa
7-8    | `-32767 ... 32767`  | Acceleration-X (Most Significant Byte first)
9-10   | `-32767 ... 32767`  | Acceleration-Y (Most Significant Byte first)
11-12  | `-32767 ... 32767`  | Acceleration-Z (Most Significant Byte first)
13-14  | `0 ... 2046`, `0 ... 30` | Power info (11+5bit unsigned), first 11 bits is the battery voltage above 1.6V, in millivolts (1.6V to 3.646V range). Last 5 bits unsigned are the TX power above -40dBm, in 2dBm steps. (-40dBm to +20dBm range)
15     | `0 ... 254`| Movement counter (8 bit unsigned), incremented by motion detection interrupts from accelerometer
16-17  | `0 ... 65534`| Measurement sequence number (16 bit unsigned), each time a measurement is taken, this is incremented by one, used for measurement de-duplication. Depending on the transmit interval, multiple packets with the same measurements can be sent, and there may be measurements that never were sent.
18-23  | `Any valid mac` | 48bit MAC address.

This file has been truncated. show original

Usama_Rafiq · January 30, 2020, 9:53am

Hi,
Thanks for your quick response.

Currrently, this mQQFE5I8YL2k/qz/yAPYo/aKPXnKoSJ83Sw= is the format of manufacturer ID I am getting. How can I get MAC from this?

otso · January 30, 2020, 10:40am

Hello,

You’ll need to parse the MAC from the payload. Please make sure your tag is having firmware version 2.5.9 and broadcasting the data in RAWv2 format: lab.ruuvi.com/dfu.

You can then get the MAC from the payload, not from the UUID as reported by IOS. @theBASTI0N linked the details above.

Usama_Rafiq · January 30, 2020, 11:42am

Hello,

I’ve updated the firmware to version 2.5.9 and I am able to see MAC in the Ruuvi’s official iOS application RuuviStation, that app also shows that I have data format 5 protocol.
But it doesn’t seem to work with the app I have created. I am using ‘react-native-ble-plx’ package to detect beacons using Bluetooth.
A picture of response I am getting is attached. Please guide how to proceed.

otso · January 30, 2020, 11:50am

On a quick look this might be a limitation of react-native-ble-plx: https://github.com/Polidea/react-native-ble-plx/wiki/=-FAQ:-Beacons

If your library doesn’t support manufacturer data, you should contact Polidea to discuss your options or use some other library.

Usama_Rafiq · January 30, 2020, 1:48pm

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Using react-native-beacons-manager seems to be the solution here. But in the documentation of this package it says to define a region before requesting. What that exactly is?
You can see in the picture below that region is defined with UUID and some identifier. Is this the uuid of the beacon? Why would I provide the uuid of the beacon I am about to scan?

otso · January 30, 2020, 2:09pm

@Rinat can you help here?

Ariful_Islam · February 20, 2020, 8:31pm

Hi @Rinat / @otso,

Can you please comment on this. We are quite stuck here.

otso · February 20, 2020, 8:54pm

Hello @Ariful_Islam,

It seems that the manufacturer data you’re getting is base64-encoded, I ran it through this base64tohex decoder and got 0x99040513923c60bda4feacffc803d8a3f68a3d79caa1227cdd2c which is Ruuvi data,
9904 -> Ruuvi Innovations
0513923c60bda4feacffc803d8a3f68a3d79caa1227cdd2c -> Ruuvi Data 5.
caa1227cdd2c -> MAC address.

Rinat · February 21, 2020, 12:50am

Hi! Why are you using CLBeaconRegion in CoreLocation framework?

Here is additional info about regions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20562257/ibeacon-difference-between-proximityuuid-and-region-identifier

If you need just to listen to advertisements, you can use CoreBluetooth framework and parse the data being broadcasted (as Otso suggests
) to get the MAC.

I didn’t implement it in react native, but for native iOS you can try BTKit - https://github.com/rinat-enikeev/BTKit

Please let me know if it helped.