How to use bluetoothctl like hcitool lescan to report repeated proximity beacons

Question

I can use hcitool lescan with the --duplicates flag to capture periodic LE Advertising Reports (proximity beacons) from two nearby BLE devices:

$ sudo hcitool le         


        

Answer 1

Just found the following to work for me (Ubuntu 18.04.1, bluez 5.48):

$ bluetoothctl
[bluetooth]# scan on
[bluetooth]# menu scan
[bluetooth]# clear
SetDiscoveryFilter success
[NEW] Device de:ad:be:ef:ca:fe SampleDev
[CHG] Device de:ad:be:ef:ca:fe RSSI: -73
[CHG] Device de:ad:be:ef:ca:fe RSSI: -73
[CHG] Device de:ad:be:ef:ca:fe RSSI: -74

Looks like there is a default scan filter active that blocks most advertisements.