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.
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I have to test Ble devices with an App on iOS and Android, the scenario is having multiple device sending signals and it is difficult to figure out which device is connecting to what phone.
Is there a better way to test and what are some of best tools for checking the status of ble devices like signal strength and other characteristics.
I've been using LightBlue Explorer to poke at BLE devices to see characteristics and values. It can also emulate devices once it's seen a real one.
I ultimately ended up writing my own Device Simulator on iOS. This lets me generate a controlled BLE service/characteristic, with full control of the device name, advertised broadcast name, and characteristic values.
I'm not a ble guru, I worked on some modules to expose some simple service with pairing and bla bla :9
One of our customer ask me if it possible to control mcu gpio, with a beacon service running. For what I know beacon standard is only a lighthouse to check the proximity (streaming simple packet uuid, signal strength etc etc), and the only way to do something like this is to expose a new service running concurrently with beacon ( in practice send multi type of packets). I don't want pairing (beacon<->device app) and don't worry about race condition, if multi devices set/reset a gpio, it's not my business.
I found something similar https://community.estimote.com/hc/en-us/articles/217429867-What-is-GPIO-How-to-set-it-up-, what you think about?
There are libraries or eddystone's extensions to do that? Some project on github?
We prefer to work with Nordic ble module, but if you know solution based on other mcu, you are welcome.
Thanks for your help
Standard beacons (iBeacon, Eddystone, AltBeacon) are transmit only devices. They simply send out advertisements at a fixed rate with a unique identifier. Some manufacturers expose proprietary configuration interfaces as read-write Bluetooth LE GATT Services. But there is no standard GATT Service that does this, and the manufacturer-specific schemes are designed specifically to set beacon identifiers and other operating parameters.
I don't think there are beacon-specific libraries or extensions that will help with this, beyond standard Bluetooth LE SDKs for iOS and Android. In order to accomplish this goal with a Nordic BLE module you would need to build your own custom system:
Write custom Nordic firmware (that sits alongside beacon transmission firmware) that exposes a new Bluetooth LE GATT Service. The service would expose a writable GATT Attribute that would control the GPIO pin.
Write custom mobile app code that connects to this GATT Service (CoreBluetooth on iOS and android.bluetooth on Android), and writes to the GATT attribute to control the pin.
One thing you must be careful of is that connecting to to a GATT Service will typically stop a Bluetooth Peripheral from advertising (meaning it won't transmit as a beacon). So you may wish to drop the connection quickly to prevent mobile devices or other Bluetooth Centrals from stoping the beacon transmissions.
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.
i know that iBeacon use only advertising channel. which means there is no need connection.
im trying to make my own beacon module which send and receive data.
im curious about what makes the packet in iBeacon format(prefix /UUID / minor/ major/ TX) in communication ?
is it firmware?
let's assume that
when i make my iPhone act as iBeacon , it will send the advertising packet. which means it sends data in iBeacon format. but after turn off the app for iBeacon, i try to use my iphone
to send some files to laptop via Bluetooth low energy mode as usual.
then it will send data in bluetooth standard format. is this right?
given that situation, my iphone can be both iBeacon and just normal phone capable of bluetooth low energy.
i think also the beacon module can be like that. how about the product recently released? like estimote, redbearlab and so on. after connection, do they receive data?
Every iBeacon product works a little differently, but it is common for a product to be connectable for configuration purposes over Bluetooth LE.
Radius Networks' RadBeacon, for example, has firmware that sends out its advertisement as needed to be a standard iBeacon. The same firmware will allow a connection over Bluetooth LE, exchanging data with an external client (the RadBeacon app for iOS). This connectability is outside standard iBeacon functionality, using proprietary techniques that are still part of the larger Bluetooth LE standard.
Your understanding is therefore correct.
Full disclosure: I am Chief Engineer at Radius Networks.
Can a WindowsCE device connect so more than one BlueTooth device? The device needs to both serve as a BlueTooth hands-free speaker for a phone and connect to a third device via a serial BlueTooth connection.
Can an application do this without the need of a speciel driver?
You must understand that Windows CE is a modular OS and any specific platform capabilities are implemented by an OEM. An OEM can create a Windows CE device with absolutely no Bluetooth support or they might choose to implement just a Bluetooth client profile (say as a bluetooth audio device) or they may choose to implement a Bluetooth server so they can consume a Bluetooth serial device. They may also choose to implement both. Beyond what the OEM does in software, the hardware itself might allow only one or the other (or both or neither for that matter).
The short of this is that we can't actually answer your question becasue there is no generic answer that fits all devices. You have to ask the Device OEM what they support and if they can extend that support if they don't support what you need.