Tooling Setup

System requirements

A Linux machine with BlueZ 5.x is required. PipeWire is optional (only needed if you want to route audio through the headphones while capturing control traffic). The test environment for this project runs:

Component	Version
Kernel	6.16.5-arch1-1 (Arch Linux)
BlueZ	5.85
PipeWire	1.4.10
liblc3	1.1.3-2 (LE Audio codec)

BlueZ tools

These ship with the bluez and bluez-utils packages on most distributions.

bluetoothctl — Device management, pairing, and connection. The primary interface for interactive Bluetooth work.

bluetoothctl

btmon — HCI traffic monitor and capture. Writes btsnoop-format files that Wireshark can decode.

sudo btmon -w captures/session-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).btsnoop

hcitool — Low-level HCI commands. Useful for device scanning and link-level diagnostics.

hcitool -i hci1 scan

sdptool — SDP service browsing. Maps RFCOMM channels to their associated service UUIDs. Requires the bluez-deprecated-tools package on Arch Linux.

sdptool browse C8:7B:23:55:68:E8

Traffic analysis

Wireshark with its built-in Bluetooth dissectors handles btsnoop files. Open a capture file directly:

wireshark captures/session-20260202-134500.btsnoop

Filter to RFCOMM traffic with the display filter btrfcomm or to a specific channel with btrfcomm.channel == 14.

Python tools

The tools/ directory in the repository contains purpose-built scripts for probing and interacting with the NCH700 over RFCOMM. All scripts use the Python standard library plus bluetooth (PyBluez) for socket operations.

Script	Purpose
spp_probe.py	Scans all RFCOMM channels and reports which ones accept connections
spp_interactive.py	Opens an interactive RFCOMM session for sending hex commands and viewing responses
channel_capture.py	Connects to multiple channels simultaneously and logs all received data
ch14_session.py	Dedicated probe for channel 14 (ff55 protocol)
ch27_session.py	Dedicated probe for channel 27 (fe03 protocol)
grab_ch14.py	Fast reconnect script for channel 14, designed to catch the brief post-power-cycle window

mcbluetooth MCP server

The mcbluetooth MCP server (maintained in a sibling directory) provides tool-assisted device scanning, GATT service exploration, and BLE characteristic read/write. To register it with Claude Code:

claude mcp add mcbluetooth-local -- uv run --directory /path/to/mcbluetooth mcbluetooth

This is optional. All protocol research documented here was conducted using the BlueZ CLI tools and the Python scripts listed above.