Can a Bluetooth device act as a beacon and simultaneously be used for other functions?
I've tried looking around, without finding a concrete answer to this question.
A beacon is a Bluetooth Low Energy device that is advertising. The BLE radio is separate from the classic radio, and since the Bluetooth specification does not restrict the operation of classic Bluetooth along side Low Energy functionality then there is no issue performing classic Bluetooth operation while the device is acting as a Beacon.
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i want to know the fundamental difference between BLE and Classic Bluetooth and why exactly is BLE low power?
There are quite a few differences between Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy including:
Classic Bluetooth operates on 79 frequency channels, whereas BLE uses only 40.
Classic Bluetooth has a higher throughput than BLE, although the gap is becoming narrower with newer versions of BLE.
A classic Bluetooth device can only be connected to 7 other devices, there is no theoretical maximum to BLE.
The two use different mechanisms for broadcasting/connection. Classic only devices cannot find or connect to BLE only devices and vice versa.
The list goes on beyond the above to the point that it is more common to assume that they are two protocols only sharing a few technical similarities and the same standardisation body (The Bluetooth SIG).
As to what makes BLE low power, this lies in the duty cycle of the protocol. BLE devices sleep for most of the time they are not in operation, and only wake up to send bursts of data and then go back to sleep. Of course this depends on the use case; if an application continuously sends BLE data then there will be fewer sleep intervals and therefore the power consumption will match that of classic Bluetooth.
For more references regarding this question, please see the list below:
4 Key Differences between Classic Bluetooth and BLE
The difference between Classic Bluetooth and BLE
Bluetooth vs Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
Bluetooth vs BLE
Can a Bluetooth LE powered device discover a classic Bluetooth device and vice-versa?
I hope this helps.
What I want to ask is - Will a BLE device be able to answer calls, play music, etc... or that Bluetooth 4.0 is intended for a kind of NFC alternative?
Bluetooth Low Energy is part of the Bluetooth 4.0 specification. Bluetooth 4.0 includes Classic Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth High Speed.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) uses a different radio protocol with fewer, wider channels and a lower transmission rate and power than Bluetooth Classic (although it uses the same frequencies) and most importantly it implements a different set of profiles.
Classic Bluetooth has profiles such as Serial Port Profile (SPP) and Handsfree Profile (HFP) while the most commonly used profile in BLE is the Generic Attribute profile (GATT). This profile allows for the transfer of small amounts of data at relatively low speeds and is not suitable high-bandwidth time-critical applications such as audio streaming.
Dual-mode Bluetooth chipsets that support Classic Bluetooth and BLE are available although often they can only operate in one mode at a time. Many BLE chipsets are BLE only, however as it reduces cost and complexity.
The short answer is that BLE can't support the classic Bluetooth functions you described.
Bluetooth 4.0 has all backwards compatibility with it's older versions.
BLE is a form of connect using low energy technology.
BLE = Bluetooth Low energy.
They are different technologies with different proposes. BLE tend to be used in heart rate monitors, bike computers, medicinal applications and etc. Whenever the power supply is limited.
BLE intent is not for headsets and similar devices. That's why you see on phone specifications Bluetooh 4.0 + BLE (or LE). Bluetooh is a technology, BLE is a 'protocol of communication'
I'm attempting to use a classic bluetooth chip to possibly send out signals to another device with a classic bluetooth chip.
Now would it be possible to create a beacon with classic bluetooth?
You certainly can. A Bluetooth LE beacon typically sends out regular advertisements with a unique identifier that can be picked up by a receiving device (typically a mobile phone) doing a Bluetooth LE scan. Since you can also send out advertisements and do scans with classic Bluetooth, you could build the same thing with this technology.
The main disadvantage is that classic Bluetooth uses much more power, both for transmitting the beacon signal and more importantly for doing the scans. So if you are using mobile phones to detect the beacons the battery drain will be much higher than if using Bluetooth LE.
I'm wondering if Bluetooth 4.0 (low-energy) mobile phones could discover classic Bluetooth devices (3.0 and lower), and vice-versa. All I am interested in is discovering the "friendly names".
EDIT: As I have understood the replies of this post, Bluetooth 4.0 can discover classic Bluetooth devices but not the other way around. Then my follow-up question is, can a Bluetooth 4.0 device in LE mode discover classic Bluetooth devices?
The answer depends on if you mean Bluetooth v4.0 device, or BLE device, the two are not the same.
Bluetooth v4.0 = Classic Bluetooth + Bluetooth High Speed + Bluetooth Low Energy
Therefore, Bluetooth Low Energy is only a subset of Bluetooth v4.0. If your question is regarding Bluetooth v4.0 phones (generally phones are not BLE only), then the answer is Yes, Bluetooth v4.0 mobile phones can theoretically discover Bluetooth v3.0 devices and lower.
Hate to be blunt, but nope not possible (although it would be handy). 4.0 is 4.0 alone. Check out the Bluetooth Core Spec for more info
No a BLE can not discover a classic bluetooth device nor a classic bluetooth device can discover a BLE.
A device with BT V4 will discover both.
And A BT V4 will be discovered by BLE if it is advertising as BLE.
I also had same question, so I did little experiment.
I may contribute to this topic from my experiment that I did with old mobile(Nokia C5-00), New mobile(Samsung galaxy grand prime) and two bluegiga ble113 chips.
I swithched on bluetooth of all the devices and started scanning for near by devices I observed the following:
Observation1: Samsung galaxy grand prime (BT version 4 +Ble): It was showing both bluegiga ble113 chips, and Nokia C5-00 on the list.
Observation2: Nokia C5-00 (Earlier version of BT): It was showing only Samsung galaxy grand prime in the list.
Observation3: ble113: Out of the two ble113 chips one was in advertising mode and other in scanning mode at first the scanner chip was discovering only other BLE113 advertiser chip, but when I started advertising from Samsung galaxy grand prime phone using BLEBroadcast app the ble scanner chip started discovering the Samsung galaxy grand prime phone also.
Its perhaps late but just to clarify. The question in the title sounds like its asking about the interoperability of the two different Bluetooth modes, but the details of the question drift toward whether or not the mobile phone supports these two capabilities.
As far as the interoperability is concerned, as pointed out by VSingh, Classic Bluetooth discovery and Bluetooth Low Energy discovery work in opposite ways.
In classic, the endpoint [eg your Android] SEARCHING for devices TRANSMITS inquiry packets. Devices in discoverable mode, LISTEN for these packets and respond accordingly.
In Bluetooth Low energy, the endpoint [eg your Android] SEARCHING for devices LISTENS (scans) for advertisement packets. BTLE devices that are discoverable TRANSMIT these advertisement packets.
If the radio on your mobile device can do both of these things, then you can discover both classic and low energy devices.
I'm looking to implement the Bluetooth protocol over a physical Wi-Fi based transport, if that makes sense.
Basically my phone has Bluetooth, and my laptop has a Wi-Fi card (802.11a/b/g).
I know that Wi-Fi operates over the range 2.412 GHz - 2.472 GHz, and that Bluetooth operates over the range 2.402 GHz - 2.480 GHz.
I couldn't help but notice the overlap here. So my questions are:
What sort of low-level APIs would I need (preferably in C, on Windows) in order to send a signal out at certain frequencies on the Wi-Fi card?
Would I be able to implement a Bluetooth stack on top of this?
So basically, can I transmit Bluetooth using my Wi-Fi card as essentially a radio transmitter?
Thanks
Implementing the Bluetooth protocol over a physical Wi-Fi based transport does make sense!
Bluetooth high speed (v3.0) defines the possibility to use alternate MAC/PHY layers, known as AMP feature. The L2CAP and higher layer protocols from Bluetooth can be transmitted over a Wi-Fi MAC/PHY layer rather than a Bluetooth MAC/PHY layer with a resulting higher throughput. Some products are on the marked supporting this - look for 'Bluetooth High Speed', AMP or Bluetooth v3.0 support.
No, you can't do this. Bluetooth devices are typically wrapped up all in one chip. Plus, they use completely different modulation techniques. No low-level anything is going to allow you to transmit anything different, unless you are flashing the device. Even then, it may not get you much closer.
Bluetooth Modulation Information:
http://www.palowireless.com/infotooth/tutorial/radio.asp and http://classes.engr.oregonstate.edu/eecs/spring2003/ece44x/groups/g9/jon_gillen/white_paper_jon.pdf
About the only thing you can share between WiFi and Bluetooth devices is the antenna. (Assuming only one device is using it at a time... don't blast 32mW into the receiver of the other radio!) The radio itself is all wrapped up into the same chip. The same is generally true for WiFi.
Bluetooth and Wifi have different phy layer protocols and thats what is coded into their chips, hence you can't use one chip to transmit packets of the other protocol.
Moreover most of the chip vendors, do not expose any RF logic.
Technically yes but there are some things to consider such as the pre existing coding on the chip and if the chip can support Bluetooth coding as well as wifi coding, I mean if you have two separate wifi chips go ahead and try but be warned I tried and nearly killed my computer because of preexisting copyright protection coding on other parts of my pc that prevented any programs on the chip from starting until I reset the chip to factory defalts.