Problem with connecting Bangle to Chrome on MacOS

Hello together,

we are trying to get our bangle connected to the Bangle.js Uploader and did manage to do so two times, but in general it simply doesn't work.
We're running Chrome on an up to date MacBook Air 2020, so there should be no hardware problem BLE-wise.
The Bangle Watch is not connected to the Mac via "regular" Bluetooth or at least unpaired by now.
On the watch, BLE is on, make connectable is on, programmable is on, HID is off - so should be all ok?
I tried to reset the watch (holding button 1 and 2 for some seconds) - rebootet but still didn't connect, I restarted the browser as well as the mac - no connection.

Any further ideas/hints??

thanks a lot for comments!

Johannes

Hi Johannes,

Sorry you're having troubles. It all sounds like you're doing the right things - in this case I'd say restart your Mac, but it seems you've already done that.

So you go to https://banglejs.com/apps/, click Connect and then you get the banglejs.com wants to pair menu, but you don't see the Bangle in it?

Or you do see the Bangle and it then can't connect after you click on it and click pair?

Just to rule out some things:

• Please could you ensure your Bangle is nice and close to the Laptop
  
• Do you have any other device like a phone that you could try and connect with? iPhones need a paid app, but Android will work fine out of the box
  
• Also when did you get your Bangle? If it was a while ago then a firmware update might help - and you can use your phone for that.
  

Hey Gordon,

thanks for getting back!

So you go to https://banglejs.com/apps/, click Connect and then you
get the banglejs.com wants to pair menu, but you don't see the Bangle
in it?

-> correct, simply don't get to see it at all

Please could you ensure your Bangle is nice and close to the Laptop Do
you have any other device like a phone that you could try and connect
with? iPhones need a paid app, but Android will work fine out of the
box

-> it was directly next to or on the laptop :)
I did get WebBLE and running it on a iPad Pro 2020 I can connect nicely to the Watch I found. Still it would be great to have it work with the MB Air ...

Also when did you get your Bangle? If it was a while ago then a
firmware update might help - and you can use your phone for that.

-> fully new, just received it a week ago

So in case you schuld have any further ideas, it's be great to hear from you again!

All the best,

Johannes

Hi! Ok, that's interesting then - at least we know it works fine with another device, so it sounds like some configuration issue with the MacBook.

Do you have any other Bluetooth devices connected to it, like airpods? Also were you downloading anything via WiFi?

Sounds stupid but they generally use the same aerials, so if you're doing something that is using the aerial a lot for other stuff it can interfere with Bluetooth LE

I am having a terrible time connecting the watch on my MacBook. It's currently upgrading to BigSur... we shall see. The watch connects really well with my Raspberry Pi as well as my iPhone using the recommended approaches.

That's odd. Any errors, warnings, messages that appear?

It'll be interesting to see if anything changes on Big Sur

Just tried after the upgrade to BigSur. No errors, warnings, or messages. It just can't find the watch or after it found it it loses the connection very quickly after.

An update... Even though it's not "technically" required, I enabled the #experimental-web-platform-features flag in chrome://flags and now it works really well on my MacBook.

Interesting - thanks for the update!