Bluetooth Modules
Added by Bryan Christian about 8 years ago
- Must be Bluetooth 4 LE
- Must have HID profile
Narrowed down to two options once you bring in those two factors to get chips that are both reasonably inexpensive and meet spec.
https://www.adafruit.com/products/2479 - UART based Bluetooth board
https://www.adafruit.com/products/2633 - SPI based bluetooth board
Long term SPI seems like a better solution, but we're going to have an easier time getting UART wired and functioning.
Both are 17.50 with drops at 10 to 15.75 and 100 to 14.00 for volume discounts at this time.
Alternate sources were reviewed, but the two requirements were continually causing things to be excluded or they were more expensive.
Additionally, it may be worth purchasing of the following:- https://www.adafruit.com/products/2269 - Bluetooth module with sniffing capabilities for debugging the actual bluetooth communication
- https://www.adafruit.com/products/1327 - Bluetooth module from Adafruit so I've got a BTLE4 compatible module for my desktop where I'm doing my development. (this one is actually more of a requirement since I don't have bluetooth in my desktop at all)
Replies (2)
RE: Bluetooth Modules - Added by J. Simmons about 8 years ago
Good stuff. Concur about UART for now. SPI looks like a better protocol long term, but think our ultimate selection depends on the board we select.
Consider the Raspberry Pi zero (it is as an example of a new board I have been pondering). The RPi Zero is small, low cost (even at low numbers), and supports NodeBots through raspi-io. Note, raspi-io does not support SPI, making it an example of a board that would leave us needing to use UART (or I2C if it was an option).
I will wait until we work on the board selection PBI to unpack my thoughts on the RPi Zero vs other boards. Plus, I want to get some more experience with Nodebots (probably in the test rig) before I get too committed to the idea of using an RPi Zero.
RE: Bluetooth Modules - Added by Bryan Christian about 8 years ago
UART module purchased along with other requisite hardware. It is wired onto a protoboard. Have to have some time to code/test the keyboard functionality.
(1-2/2)