In addition to the L2CAP and RFCOMM sockets described in this chapter, BlueZ provides a number of other socket types. The most useful of these is the Host Controller Interface (HCI) socket, which provides a direct connection to the microcontroller on the local Bluetooth adapter. This socket type, introduced in section Section 4.1, can be used to issue arbitrary commands to the Bluetooth adapter. Programmers requiring precise control over the Bluetooth controller to perform tasks such as asynchronous device discovery or reading signal strength information should use HCI sockets.
The Bluetooth Core Specification describes communication with a Bluetooth microcontroller in great detail, which we summarize here. The host computer can send commands to the microcontroller, and the microcontroller generates events to indicate command responses and other status changes. A command consists of a Opcode Group Field that specifies the general category the command falls into, an Opcode Command Field that specifies the actual command, and a series of command parameters. In BlueZ, hci_send_cmd is used to transmit a command to the microcontroller.
int hci_send_cmd(int sock, uint16_t ogf, uint16_t ocf, uint8_t plen,
void *param);
Here, sock is an open HCI socket, ogf is the Opcode Group Field, ocf is the Opcode Command Field, and plen specifies the length of the command parameters param.
Calling read on an open HCI socket waits for and receives the next event from the microcontroller. An event consists of a header field specifying the event type, and the event parameters. A program that requires asynchronous device detection would, for example, send a command with ocf of OCF_INQUIRY and wait for events of type EVT_INQUIRY_RESULT and EVT_INQUIRY_COMPLETE. The specific codes to use for each command and event are defined in the specifications and in the BlueZ source code.