A script and cron job to auto connect to a Bluetooth Network.

See this video by Andrew Mulholland on how to setup a connection on a Pi3 manually first.

The bt-pan script comes from here.

After cloning this repository copy the 2 scripts bt-pan and check-and-connect-bt-pan.sh into ~pi/bin
(create the folder if necessary)

Find your Mac/PC MAC Address

We need the Bluetooth MAC address of your Mac/PC that is providing the Bluetooth network.

On the Pi run hcitool scan:

hcitool scan
Scanning ...
	F4:5C:89:8B:10:E8	Wayne’s MacBook Pro

Edit check-and-connect-bt-pan.sh and replace the exisitng MAC address assigned to BT_MAC_ADDR with the one found by hcitool scan for your computer.

BT_MAC_ADDR=<Your MAC address>

CRON job

In order for the Pi to automatically (re)connect create a cron job to run a script every minute.

Type:

crontab -e

Add this line:

* * * * * /home/pi/bin/check-and-connect-bt-pan.sh

Then save the file.