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This is a wonderful hack! But — using a Raspberry Pi and Linux is overkill for this. It introduces huge unnecessary complexity. A simpler approach would be to go with Zephyr and a small microcontroller (ARM Cortex M4).
So it's basically what I would expect to get if I asked for a generic Bluetooth dongle.
That’s where this relay comes in—it bridges Bluetooth to USB, so you can still use your devices.
Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either.
But it's very clever. Kudos.
Cool stuff! Actually that tempts me to start a new rabbit hole research: could we do BT -> Internet -> BT. I would have so many uses to that.
Well, you need a frame converter that sends it to an IP address/DNS server, and on the receiving side something that receives that packet on a specific port and translates it to a BT command. I would say the most complicated part would be the TCP/IP stack, and binding/publishing your address, but if you are running something with Embedded Linux it is doable :)
So it's basically what I would expect to get if I asked for a generic Bluetooth dongle.
Not quite, if your PC has a policy that disables Bluetooth, a BT dongle would not work either. That’s where this relay comes in—it bridges Bluetooth to USB, so you can still use your devices.
> This project was born out of a desire to help a friend who couldn't use his favorite Bluetooth mouse and keyboard due to Bluetooth being disabled on his work laptop. Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either. But it's very clever. Kudos.
Another thought around this is that I don't even think there's anything intrinsically insecure about BT as an attack vector but most likely some old policy based on security issues that existed in the early days of Bluetooth. Or at least I don't know of any, but I'm no expert in this so I would love to hear other people's insights here.
> This project was born out of a desire to help a friend who couldn't use his favorite Bluetooth mouse and keyboard due to Bluetooth being disabled on his work laptop. Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either. But it's very clever. Kudos.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I had thought about this as well but came to the conclusion that from the company's perspective, this is no different than connecting a random keyboard bought from Amazon, what do you think? Another thought around this is that I don't even think there's anything intrinsically insecure about BT as an attack vector but most likely some old policy based on security issues that existe…
It sucked. Big time, but they had the clout.
> This project was born out of a desire to help a friend who couldn't use his favorite Bluetooth mouse and keyboard due to Bluetooth being disabled on his work laptop. Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either. But it's very clever. Kudos.