What Bluetooth 4.0 devices and radios are available?

Question

Bluetooth 4.0 is the latest specification to be adopted by the Bluetooth cabal, which notably adds Bluetooth low energy into the mix, which is designed to allow radios that sip battery like 802.15.4 ("ZigBee") to directly connect to consumer devices.

It sounds great, and according to a search for "bluetooth 4.0 devices", we are swimming in them because they all showed up Q4 2010, however I can barely find more than a single chip (TI CC2540), let alone any consumer product that is BT 4.0. Where are they?

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 11 '20 at 15:10

Consumer Devices

Android

Samsung phones^[specify]
HTC phones^[specify]

Android 4.3 (API level 18) comes with an official Bluetooth Low Energy API. In older versions, BLE was not integrated into the Android API so each manufacturer had/has their own API.

Apple

iOS

iPhone 4S, 5+
iPad 3g, 4g, mini
iPod Touch 5g, Nano 7g

OS X

MacBook Air (Mid 2011/Model 4,x+)
Mac Mini (Mid 2011/Model 5,x+)

Modules

BlueGiga

BLE112 - single mode, programmable micro (8051) with spare GPIO/ADC
BLE113 - like 112 but with USB interface and additional BlueGiga stack software(?)
BT111 - dual mode (LE/classic), programmable micro

RedBear

BLE Shield/BLE Mini - hobbyist-level modules, may lack FCC cert.

Laird Technologies

muRata Technologies

There are three modules: Type VZ, Type WS, Type 1BX

connectBlue

OLP425

Roving Networks, acquired by Microchip

ICs

TI

CC2541 BLE SoC
CC2560 Bluetooth 4.0 dual mode supported
lots.

Nordic Semi

CC254x and Nordic ones are NOT Bluetooth 4.0 but Bluetooth LE only. I think this post may confuse people to think that they can do 4.0 with this. — Tõnu Samuel, Jul 13 '14 at 04:52

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 11 '11 at 17:14

3

CSR8000

http://www.csr.com/products/54/csr8000-platform

answered Jan 11 '11 at 17:14

Toby Jaffey

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 27 '12 at 17:43

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TI cc2540, get the mini dev kit http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2540dk-mini
Nordic Semiconductor nRF8001, get the dev kit http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-R-low-energy/nRF8001-Development-Kit
- BlueGiga BLED112

answered Apr 27 '12 at 17:43

hromanko

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+1 to nRF8001 that has plenty of stuff integrated, making it easier. They also have iPhone demo app so it's ready to go. Relatively easy to integrate. – Gustavo Litovsky Dec 04 '12 at 18:04
This is NOT Bluetooth 4.0 but Bluetooth LE. – Tõnu Samuel Jul 13 '14 at 04:51

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 10 '14 at 15:41

0

We've used the CC256x from TI which is a dual mode radio. Capable of Bluetooth and BLE. You need an external microcontroller but idesign isn't difficult.

answered Apr 10 '14 at 15:41

Gustavo Litovsky

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 25 '14 at 15:36

I've been using the Dialog DA14580 quite a lot. There is a development kit available with a lot of source code and documentation. It's an integrated ARM Cortex-M0 with an integrated BLE radio running the rivierawaves BLE software stack.

It may be worth to look it up.