UPDATE: I got my hands on another BTLE capable dongle and added it below with the other CSR8510 dongles.
This is a short investigation of Bluetooth Low Energy USB dongles that have been reported to work in Linux or officially claim Linux support.
Plugable USB-BT4LE
- Web: http://plugable.com/products/usb-bt4le
- Advertised as linux compatible
- Mode: dual mode
- BT chip: Broadcom BCM20702
- Tested by Michael Saunby on Ubuntu 12.10
- Note: I own one of those and had to jump through some hoops to get it to work
- but that’s another blog post to come.
Other dongles based on the Broadcom BCM20702:
** SPEEDLINK VIAS Nano USB Bluetooth Adapter**
- Web: http://www.speedlink.com/?p=2&cat=271&pid=20182
- Mode: dual mode
- BT chip: CSR8510
- Tested by Raspberry Pi forum user killkrt on a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian
Other dongles based on the CSR8510:
- Sitecom CNT-524 Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongle (reported working by Thomas Rücker)
- Inateck’s BTA-CSR2W, BTA-CSR4B1, BTA-CSR4B2, BTA-CSR4B3, BTA-CSR4B5
- CSL- USB nano Bluetooth-Adapter V4.0: I bought one of those and it does work out-of-the-box:
$ dmesg
\[ 6896.920942\] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
\[ 6897.140579\] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a12, idProduct=0001
\[ 6897.140588\] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
\[ 6897.140593\] usb 1-1.2: Product: CSR8510 A10
Bluegiga BLED112
- Web: http://www.bluegiga.com/en-US/products/bluetooth-4.0-modules/bled112-bluetooth-smart-dongle/
- Mode: single mode
- BT chip: Texas Instruments CC2540
- Tested by: Tamás Fábián
- Note: The BLE112 the dongle is based on also has a virtual com port feature and comes with a C API. This is great for developers who want/need to dig into the BLE protocol (i.e. develop their own BLE-enabled embedded devies). Bluegiga also has their own programming language called BGScript that more abstract than C and easier to get into if you don’t know C. However, in order to flash your BGScript applcication onto a BLE112 you will need the Texas Instruments CC Debugger (a USB box and corresponding software). I have successfully used the BLELabs BLE112-Protostick in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.