Description: 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.
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 Nordic DFU bootloader firmware, which means that if you want to reprogram these devices you must use a J-Link (and, likely, an SWD adapter + SWD Breakout) You cannot over-the-air reprogram it.
Check out our tutorial for more details and software downloads!
Datasheets, drivers, and EagleCAD files available at the tutorial download page
Revision History:
As of March 23, 2022, We've updated the board to use CP2102N instead of CP2104 as the CP2014 has been discontinued and replaced with CP2102n. This USB-to-Serial chip is the same functionality and driver.
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
As of April 5, 2017, the board has been updated to change the USB-Serial converter chip to CP2104 and remove the SWD connector (you can get to the SWD connection pads on the bottom of
As of July 31st, 2015, we're selling an updated version with a black PCB - the firmware/sniffer code/usage is identical, just the PCB color has changed!
Documentation and Downloads