barnowl-bgapi

barnowl-bgapi converts the decodings of any ambient Bluetooth Low Energy devices from a BGAPI-enabled Silicon Labs device into standard developer-friendly JSON that is vendor/technology/application-agnostic.

barnowl-bgapi is a lightweight Node.js package that can run on resource-constrained edge devices. It can forward data to reelyActive's Pareto Anywhere open source middleware suite, and can just as easily be run standalone behind a barnowl instance, as detailed in the code examples below.

Quick Start

Clone this repository and install package dependencies with npm install. If installation fails on your system, validate the special cases for installing SerialPort.

Then from the root folder run at any time:

npm start

barnowl-bgapi will attempt to automatically connect to a serial device with the name 'Silicon Labs'. Alternatively, the path to the device can be specified as an option (ex: "/dev/ttyUSB0"), for instance in the bin/barnowl-bgapi startup script.

Hello barnowl-bgapi!

The following code will listen to simulated hardware and output packets to the console:

const BarnowlBgapi = require('barnowl-bgapi');

let barnowl = new BarnowlBgapi();

barnowl.addListener(BarnowlBgapi.TestListener, {});

barnowl.on("raddec", (raddec) => { console.log(raddec); });

barnowl.on("infrastructureMessage", (message) => { console.log(message); });

As output you should see a stream of raddec objects similar to the following:

{
  transmitterId: "fee150bada55",
  transmitterIdType: 3,
  rssiSignature: [
    {
      receiverId: "511ab5b6ec80",
      receiverIdType: 2,
      rssi: -35,
      numberOfDecodings: 1
    }
  ],
  packets: [ '402555daba50e1fe0201061bff99040510f4412ac5c401b8fca4011c9256954303f8846c38d057' ],
  timestamp: 1777037147513
}

Regardless of the underlying RF protocol and hardware, the raddec specifies what (transmitterId) is where (receiverId & rssi), as well as how (packets) and when (timestamp).

Is that owl you can do?

While barnowl-bgapi may suffice standalone for simple real-time applications, its functionality can be greatly extended with the following software packages:

• advlib to decode the individual packets from hexadecimal strings into JSON
• barnowl to combine parallel streams of RF decoding data in a technology-and-vendor-agnostic way

These packages and more are bundled together as the Pareto Anywhere open source middleware suite, which includes several barnowl-x listeners.

Supported Listener Interfaces

The following listener interfaces are supported.

Serial

barnowl.addListener(BarnowlReel.SerialListener, { path: 'auto' });

Test

Provides a steady stream of simulated reel packets for testing purposes.

barnowl.addListener(BarnowlBgapi.TestListener, {});

Pareto Anywhere Integration

barnowl-bgapi includes a script to forward data to a local Pareto Anywhere instance as UDP raddecs with target localhost:50001. Start this script with the command:

npm run forwarder

See our Run Pareto Anywhere on a Raspberry Pi and Run Pareto Anywhere on a PC tutorials for instructions on how to run barnowl-bgapi as a systemd service on boot on a Raspberry Pi or PC, respectively.

To instead forward UDP raddecs to a remote Pareto Anywhere instance, start this script with the command:

npm run forwarder xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the remote instance.

Contributing

Discover how to contribute to this open source project which upholds a standard code of conduct.

Security

Consult our security policy for best practices using this open source software and to report vulnerabilities.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 reelyActive

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.