GUI can't find Ganglion BLE on Windows 10 [obsolete]

edited August 2020 in Ganglion
Hello, I have a Windows 10 laptop with Bluetooth LE. Attached is a picture from Bluetooth parameters demonstrating the Bluetooth LE Enumerator. I can power up the Ganglion (blue LED D2 is blinking) but the computer does not find it. Could I please ask for your help? Thank you in advance.

image 
«1

Comments

  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    Elizabeth, hi.

    The tutorial mentions the requirement of using a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE, or Bluetooth 4.0) dongle from CSR (CSR 4.0). This is because Windows hardware is so variable, the built in BLE interface often does not meet the requirements of Ganglion communications.

    http://docs.openbci.com/Tutorials/02-Ganglion_Getting Started_Guide#ganglion-getting-started-guide-downloadrun-the-openbci-gui-on-windows

    Please follow the instructions there after you have obtained a CSR 4.0 dongle.

    Regards,

    William


  • Hi William,

    Thank you for your response. 

    Best wishes

    Elisabeth
  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    edited February 2017
    People might be wondering what is "CSR". It was originally an acronym for Cambridge Silicon Radio, a silicon "fabless" semiconductor company. They were acquired by Qualcomm in 2015. The CSR designed Bluetooth chips are in a variety of devices. Including dongles from various vendors.


  • Thanks for your comment, William @wjcroft
  • Please be sure to use the zadig tool! I put a bunch of screen shots in the tutorial @wjcroft posted, thanks William!
  • Thanks for your comment and the screen shots, @pushtheworld
  • I'm having trouble getting this working...

    I've followed the instructions to the letter on a Windows 10 Desktop and Windows 10 Laptop - with no luck.

    In all cases the Ganglion doesn't appear in the list of devices in OpenBCI GUI.

    After repeating the steps about three times on both machines, I thought maybe something was wrong with the Ganglion, so tried installing the CSR "Harmony" software which enables scanning for devices - my Ganglion was listed! I tried pairing, but no luck as I assume it's a BLE device which you don't pair (like my step monitor).

    So I went to OpenBCI to see if it popped up...no luck (gave an error "Code 412" in the status bar). So I installed the Zadig drivers and tried in OpenBCI GUI again - no error...but not Ganglion either!!

    Any ideas as to what is going wrong? I've tried this in a number of different USB slots too...

    Giles
  • Actually managed to get it to work - by trying another USB slot - perhaps the v2.0 are different to the v3.0?
  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    Yes, USB 2 has simpler driver interfaces.
  • Do what is shown in this video! I did so and after all steps, ganglion was found in the GUI. ElisabethSmithie
  • edited February 2017
    Hello, the GUI still doesn't find the Ganglion BLE on my computer after I obtained the CSR4 dongle (from local vendor Amazon.fr). As shown at the image the dongle is listed and I have used the Zadig tool to replace the driver.

    image

    I am afraid that, contrary to @gilesforrest, I only have one USB slot at my Acer Windows 10 hybrid laptop and it must be a USB2.0 as it does not have a blue line.

    @Paski thanks for your suggestion. I tried to follow it but the very long install of the Visual Studio Community failed (I actually tried hard to remove as many files as possible from my 29 GB C: drive to have the 10 GB necessary for the install - noting that my D: drive is 465 GB). I wrote the protocol of the video here:
     
    1. Download Visual Studio Community 2015 https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/ (just to obtain the Visual C++ compiler).
    2. Perform custom install ticking the Visual C++ box in order to obtain the compiler.
    3. Download Python 2.7 (2.7.10 in video) https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7/
    4. Download Nodejs 4 (4.2.3 in video) https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v4.2.3/
    5. Download Zadig and follow procedure mentioned by OpenBCI
    6. From Noble github page (https://github.com/sandeepmistry/noble) download a zip file of the project. He downloads "noble-master.zip".
    7. On a command prompt, navigate to the noble directory and run npm install. It is mentioned that this "downloads the dependencies and compiles the native extensions". Maybe this download step is linked to the solution?
    8. Navigate to "examples" directory and use node advertisement-discovery.js to perform a Low Energy Bluetooth Scan for nearby devices.
    9. You can find the ID of a device (e.g. arduino), run "node peripharal explorer.js" and paste the ID. The program connects to the arduino and prints out information on the device.


    Dear all, could I please ask for your help? Thank you in advance.
  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    edited February 2017
    Is this an Acer ZenBook? All of the models that turn up on a Google search for me, only show USB 3 ports, not USB 2.

    What is the exact model / year, etc.


    The USB 3 ports are not all universally blue. Some are just plain white or neutral. Article above shows how to find out in Windows Device Manager. Also see,

  • celticharpcelticharp Athens, Greece
    "The tutorial mentions the requirement of using a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE, or Bluetooth 4.0) dongle from CSR (CSR 4.0). This is because Windows hardware is so variable, the built in BLE interface often does not meet the requirements of Ganglion communications."

    I'm sorry, do you mean the built-it hardware of bluetooth does not meet the requirements? Or the windows driver for the built in bluetooth device does not meet the requirements? Maybe if I switch to Linux I will be able to connect my Ganglion without the dongle? My laptop has built in Bluetooth 4.0.
    Do MAC computers need the dongle?
    My Ganglion just arrived but I'm afraid I misread the part about the dongle... 
  • edited February 2017

    Replying to @wjcroft ;

    Thank you for your response. I have an ACER Aspire SW5-012 (32bits, Windows 10) which has a single USB port, and that is a USB2.0. I have verified that indirectly from the Device Manager (image below), as there is only one USB3.0 mention and I saw in "Connected Devices" (image of my previous message) that this corresponds to a USB3.0 SATA Bridge. 

    image


    I have verified directly that the port is USB2.0 from different PC magazines: 

    I was wondering if step 7 of my previous message (download of dependencies) is linked to the solution. I would appreciate your help. Thank you.
  • celticharpcelticharp Athens, Greece
    "Two USB standards are currently available on Acer computers: USB 2.0
    (High-speed USB) and USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB). USB 2.0 ports on Acer
    computers have a black tongue in the port, while USB 3.0 ports have a blue
    tongue. For best performance, USB 3.0 devices should always be plugged
    into USB 3.0 ports. Consult your device’s documentation to see which
    standard it supports."
    according to Acer's manual so it is indeed a USB 2 port!

    Do you have your laptop plugged in to power?
    I have read at the manual the following "When using a USB port, it is
    recommended to plug in the power
    adapter". 
  • Replying to @celticharp

    Yes. Thank you for your comment.
  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    @celticsharp, hi.

    Mac computers do not need the dongle. This statement has recently been added to the Ganglion tutorial. Your Windows or Linux machine will need the CSR dongle. The built in BLE hardware on Windows machines is too variable to be supported by the Zadig driver. I think this is primarily a BLE driver issue. But you can't replace the Windows BLE built-in driver. The external CSR BLE dongle allows use of the Zadig driver which is known to work.

    @ElisabethSmithie, hmm. I'm running out of suggestions. You state that your laptop is 32 bits. That kind of dates it in terms of driver support. The steps you mention regarding following @Paski's video, I have not done this myself. AJ Keller @pushtheworld is the Node expert, he might have some insights on the steps listed. Is the Visual C++ compiler the only C++ possible? Doesnt Gnu gcc work?

    Regards,
  • celticharpcelticharp Athens, Greece
    Thank you wjcroft.

    Elisabeth,
    About the Visual Studio installation, what does the log say about the error? 
    If the size of your C drive is still the problem, maybe you could resize your drives and make more space for C out of your D drive, or install it directly at D. (not sure how this would work out though).
  • It was possible for the GUI to find the Ganglion BLE on a Windows 7 laptop of mine that I tried. I followed the procedure of the suggested post of the guide and first installed the "CSR Harmony Wireless Software Stack" that came on a CD with the CSR4.0 dongle and then used the Zadig tool to replace the driver.

    @wjcroft : Thank you for your response. I hope that there will be a solution for my Windows 10 laptop.
    @celticharp : Thank you for your comment. I repeated the installation to realize that it was successful with the exception of some warnings. I will try to find out how to handle space and installations on different drives.
  • @wjcroft Issue resolved! First installed the driver "CSR Harmony Wireless Software Stack" that came with the CSR4.0 dongle CD, (then restarted PC), then replaced the driver using the Zadig tool and then switched on the GUI, switched off and then back on.

    Best wishes
  • celticharpcelticharp Athens, Greece
    Hello again guys,
    I had the exact problem Elisabeth was describing, I installed the CSR Harmony driver that you said Elisabeth but Ganglion was still not recognized. 
    Eventually, I don't know what solved it. I changed USB ports (it actually works on USB 2.0 and USB 3.0), toggled Windows 10 Bluetooth On and Off and I suspect that this last one helped/solved it. Just referring it in case someone else has the same problem with us.
  • edited February 2017
    @celticharp sounds like similar steps to mine!

    CSR harmony driver installation, reboot, zadig override, reboot, try various USB ports and it started working

    Giles
  • For those using the video above, you don't need to install Python or Visual Studio first, simply install Node.js, extract Noble and run:

    npm install -g windows-build-tools

    This will install the correct versions of Python and VC++ for you.
  • Thank you @gilesforrest for your comment!
  • I found celticharp's comment above useful.  I had success connecting BLE to a Ganglion on a Windows10 machine by following tutorial including the Zadig driver replacement but without using the CSR harmony option.  With the CSR8510A10 plugged in to a USB2 port, the secret seems to be to use the device manager to disable the BLE dongle and then re-enable it and restart the hub and GUI. 

    I shall post again when I have the procedure refined, hopefully on Windows7 also.
  • Further to my previous comment: tests on Windows10 have shown that the only procedure that sometimes works is:
    1. Start openBCI hub
    2. Start openBCI gui
    3. Try to find Ganglion on BLE - it has always failed here so far.
    4. Close the gui
    5. End the openBCI hub in the task manager (doesn't seem to be the same to quit using the task toolbar icon)
    6. Disable the CSR8510 in the device manager.
    7. Enable the CSR8510 again.
    8. Start the hub.
    9. Start the gui.
    10. Then, for at least 50% of the time, the Ganglion can now be found.  If not, repeat the procedure from 4.

    Attempting to disable the CSR8510 while the hub is active upsets the PC and then it thinks it needs a reboot to install new hardware.

    I hope this helps someone.


  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    BLED112 is now supported in the latest Hub version, v1.4.2.


    This dongle may be more robust than than the previously recommend CSR / Zadig combination. Because the BLED112 presents as a serial port, and contains more internal buffering. So can be especially helpful in the case of some OS versions where the OS BLE communications stack has large latencies.

    Mentioning AJ @pushtheworld and contact / support @openbci. Would be helpful to hear some comments regarding BLED112 with all OS combinations: Windows, Mac, Linux. My understanding was that this was initially prompted by some laggy Mac hardware or software, but should be compatible with all OSes, if going through a serial port.

  • There is only GUI support right now for the BLED112. We want to verify that this is working as well as we are seeing for all and we don't want to confuse more people with another dongle option for windows!
  • QozQoz UCSD
    Hello,

    I am getting a code 412 error after reformatting my machine. I know the board/dongle work properly because I collected data few months ago (before reformatting) and when I boot into Ubuntu and use hcitool lescan it shows the ganglion. Currently I'm using the CSR8510 A10 but reading the comments above, it seems that I should be using a bled112. Is this accurate? I'm happy to purchase one if that's the case. I'm not sure what else to try, I've gone through everything on this discussion twice now and even more generic problem solving but I still always get this code on both the latest version of the GUI (both with the binary and via processing) and the September 2017 release which I was previously using.
Sign In or Register to comment.