Bluetooth: Broadcast Audio Profile Broadcast Assistant

This document describes how to run the BAP Broadcast Assistant functionality. Note that in the examples below, some lines of debug have been removed to make this shorter and provide a better overview.

The Broadcast Assistant is responsible for offloading scan for a resource restricted device, such that scanning does not drain the battery. The Broadcast Assistant shall support scanning for periodic advertisements and may optionally support the periodic advertisements synchronization transfer (PAST) protocol.

The Broadcast Assistant will typically be phones or laptops. The Broadcast Assistant scans for periodic advertisements and transfer information to the server.

It is necessary to have CONFIG_BT_BAP_BROADCAST_ASSISTANT_LOG_LEVEL_DBG enabled for using the Broadcast Assistant interactively.

When the Bluetooth stack has been initialized (bt init), and a device has been connected, the Broadcast Assistant can discover BASS on the connected device calling bap_broadcast_assistant discover, which will start a discovery for the BASS UUIDs and store the handles, and subscribe to all notifications.

uart:~$ bap_broadcast_assistant --help
bap_broadcast_assistant - Bluetooth BAP broadcast assistant client shell
                        commands
Subcommands:
discover          : Discover BASS on the server
scan_start        : Start scanning for broadcasters
scan_stop         : Stop scanning for BISs
add_src           : Add a source <address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX> <type:
                     public/random> <adv_sid> <sync_pa> <broadcast_id>
                     [<pa_interval>] [<sync_bis>] [<metadata>]
add_broadcast_id  : Add a source by broadcast ID <broadcast_id> <sync_pa>
                     [<sync_bis>] [<metadata>]
add_pa_sync       : Add a PA sync as a source <sync_pa> <broadcast_id>
                     [bis_index [bis_index [bix_index [...]]]]>
mod_src           : Set sync <src_id> <sync_pa> [<pa_interval> | "unknown"] [<sync_bis>]
                     [<metadata>]
broadcast_code    : Send a string-based broadcast code of up to 16 bytes
                     <src_id> <broadcast code>
rem_src           : Remove a source <src_id>
read_state        : Remove a source <index>

Example usage

Setup

uart:~$ bt init
uart:~$ bap init
uart:~$ bt connect xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx public

When connected

Start scanning for periodic advertisements for a server:

Note

The Broadcast Assistant will not actually start scanning for periodic advertisements, as that feature is still, at the time of writing, not implemented.

uart:~$ bap_broadcast_assistant discover
BASS discover done with 1 recv states
uart:~$ bap_broadcast_assistant scan_start true
BASS scan start successful
Found broadcaster with ID 0x05BD38 and addr 1E:4D:0A:AA:6E:49 (random) and sid 0x00

Adding a source to the receive state with add_src:

uart:~$ bap_broadcast_assistant add_src 11:22:33:44:55:66 public 5 1 1
BASS recv state: src_id 0, addr 11:22:33:44:55:66 (public), sid 5, sync_state 1, encrypt_state 000000000000000000000000000000000
     [0]: BIS sync 0, metadata_len 0

Modifying a receive state:

uart:~$ bap_broadcast_assistant mod_src 0 true 0x03c0 0x02
BASS modify source successful
BASS recv state: src_id 0, addr 1E:4D:0A:AA:6E:49 (random), sid 0, sync_state 2, encrypt_state 0
      [0]: BIS sync 0x0001, metadata_len 4
               Metadata length 2, type 2, data: 0100

Supplying a broadcast code:

uart:~$ bap_broadcast_assistant broadcast_code 0 secretCode
Sending broadcast code:
00000000: 73 65 63 72 65 74 43 6f 64 65 00 00 00 00 00 00 |secretCo de....|
uart:~$ BASS broadcast code successful