Various Errors on Pairing - using Intel Centrino BT 4.0 on MS Driver

[rudiv]

Hello,

I have written a small app that retrieves the phone book from WP7 and WP8 phones - via PBAP.
With this I get various/random paring issues.

To avoid any misunderstandings, I came back to your C# PBAP sample app now.
I removed the Intel driver (fall back to the Microsoft driver) and things seemed to work somewhat better but I still get random issues - in fact it does not work more often than it does.

I'm having various connection issues on pairing when running on the client's system:
 - Windows 7
 - Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230
 - Microsoft generic driver 6.1.7601.17889

Now I keep getting error 43 on connecting/paring.
A while ago it used to simply not pair and failed without an error while the device remained unpaired.

I have even tried replacing the wlc2wbt.dll with the old version - as mentioned in other posts in this forum - when I did that, it worked a few times with all the WP test phones I have - although the PIN shown on the devices seemed to be random. Then suddenly it did not.

This random behavior is the worse part of the entire process - do you have any advice on how to start debugging this?

Thanks

[rudiv]

As a further note on this - when paired manually - the rest of the process always works flawlessly.

Please advise.

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hello,

How do yuo pair with your device? Do you call wclBluetoothDevice.Pair? or do you use wclAuthemticator?

[rudiv]

Hi Mike,

I tried both - when running your authenticator demo it simply does not work - never goes into the callback functions.
When using the pair method:
 - when using the older lib version with a PIN - it mostly fails and when it works it shows a different PIN, also the system dialog shows in parallel
 - when using the latest lib version without a PIN in the function call it does not work.

Please advise.

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hi,

wclAuthenticator uses DUN/SPP services by default so if your device does not have one of those service it will not work.
Your device requires BT 2.1 Simple Pairing Numeric Comparison or Passkey Notification, not PIN. WCL before 6.13.4 had problem with Pair method for BT 2.1 (it supported only legacy PIN pairing). WCL after 6.13.4 supports all BT 2.1 pairing methods with Pair but you must provide event handlrs for NumericComparison/PasskeyNotification and others.

[rudiv]

Great!

So I just ran the BluetoothDiscoveryDemo - wcl.dll v6.13.5.0.
Discovery ran fine, then I'm clicking Pair - and in deed the code enters my breakpoint in the Device_OnNumericComparison function where your code is
...{
e.Confirm = true;
}

I get the popup on the Windows Phone which shows the same number as e.Num in the handler above.

Nothing happens after that, though - the device is not paired. Any ideas?

[rudiv]

Hi Mike,

I made some further progress - I uninstalled the Intel driver and with the Microsoft one in place all the pairing worked well - I tested several times on several devices.
I restarted the PC - it still worked well on 2 WP7 devices I use but not on 2 WP8 devices - pairing failed every time.

The code (BluetoothDiscoveryDemo) still enters the Device_OnNumericComparison handler but nothing happens on the device.
I even tried deleting the pairing on the device - but that didn't change anything.

Where should I look next?

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hi,

Yes, I have found that on WP8 and Samsung Galaxy Tab Android 4.2.2 (has some issue). I have already fixed it and now testing. The problem is in how MS process pairing on Win 8/WP8 and Android devices.

[rudiv]

Hi Mike,

Great news - this is great support - I am looking forward for the update.

For your information - when the pairing worked, I ran the PBAP demo on my test phones - I was able to import contacts from WP8s but not on the WP7s. There came a connection error - code 45 I think.

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hi,

Updated version has been uploaded. Please, download it from our site: www.btframework.com/download.htm

Would be great if you can test it (pairing) on your side and let us know if it works or does not, if you don't mind.

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hi

Just tested PBAP Demo with Lumia 710 (WP7)  - all works. Probably it was pairing issues or something. Any way, ley me know does it work with fixed pairing or not so I can keep checking.

[rudiv]

Hi Mike,

This all worked out well - great support - thank you.

Pairing works - except occasional errors that are easy to work around with code retries.
So do the address book retrieval - again - occasional connection errors but works well in general.


One issue that's a concern - I've seen this twice on different PCs (both with the same Centrino BT adapter) - on pairing we got blue screen errors which crashed the PC.
We'll do more testing - so far I'd say the rate of crashes is small but significant - about 1 in every 30-40 attempts.

For example - it crashed when pairing with a Lumia 920 - but it worked with that on previous occasions.

Did you see this before?


PS: On a different idea - we've been looking for an implementation of a PBAP/Phone Book Server Equipment (PSE) instance - basically to provide phone book information from a PC to a mobile phone. I don't think your library currently supports that - how much effort would it be to implement it?

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hi,

Great that it works.

The connection error can be because of pairing error which can appear because of timeout. I faced that with some devices (very short timeout for Numeric Comparison). especially on Samsung Wave Y which does not show pairing dialong when locked. So you have to unlock the device and then click "OK" but while you do it timeout appears and no pairing no connection.

With regards to BSOD: unfortunately I have no idea how to fix it (I faced that a while ago). The problem that Win 7 allows to expand is Bluetooth drivers and different vendors (usualy they use WidComm drivers) expands default MS drivers with its own. What and how they hook no one knows. But any way I will take a look on this and try to reproduce and probably fix.

With regards to PBAP server: at present we are very busy with adding BLE support for WCL. It is almost ready but needs lot of tests with different devices. As soon as it will be finished we can add BPAB server if you need. I do not think BLE takes a lot of time. Just waiting for 2 strange devices arrival (which causes strange bugs) for test. They should be here in a week or so.

[rudiv]

Hi Mike,

I'll try to provide some logs on the BSOD crash. We were using the generic Microsoft BT driver at the moment.

Looking forward to hearing from you - on the other matter - when you'll free up.

Thanks

[Mike Petrichenko]

Hi,

Log is a great idea so I can check it here and fix possible bug.