Fix for Bug in SimpleControls Mac App (OS X 10.9 Mavericks) and BLEShield

[jensmeder]

Hi,

I stumbled upon a bug in the bluetooth stack in Mac OS X 10.9 (also in 10.9.1) that prevents the current implementation of the SimpleControls app to send data back to the BLEShield. CoreBluetooth recognizes the writable characteristic as "writable without response" but produces an error when you try to use it.
The bug has already been filed at Apple (http://prod.lists.apple.com/archives/bluetooth-dev/2013/Oct/msg00051.html) and there is a workaround available. If you want to use the BLEShield with Mac OS X 10.9 and the RedBearLab library you need to alter the characteristic "UART RX" in "RBL_BLEShield.xml" to allow "Write" and "WriteWithoutResponse". After this change you need to recompile the services.h header by using nrfgostudio.

If you have used the BLEShield with Mac OS X before you also need to erase the Bluetooth cache in Mac OS X otherwise CoreBluetooth does not recognize the characteristic change. Therefore you have to switch off Bluetooth, delete the following files and then turn it on again.

/Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist /username/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.Bluetooth.UnknownHostID.plist /username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.BluetoothAudio.plist /username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.BluetoothFileExchange.plist

I hope this information is useful to someone.