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I am building some amauter schemes with Atmel uC. And this time I want to implement bluetooth functionality in my device: I want to be able to connect to device from computer and set parameter/get some readings.

1) While writing communication software on PC side is trivial, I am puzzled on uC side. What is the easiest way of doing so? Which BT chip is the most simple/wide-spread/easy to use/not deadly expensive in 1-10 quantity (<10$)?

I don't need high speed, even 4800 baud would do at this stage :-)

2) How complex to go further and implement keyboard/mouse/other BT protocols?

BarsMonster
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    http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1404/low-cost-bluetooth http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/514/cheapest-simplest-way-to-implement-a-bluetooth-keyboard-mouse – Toby Jaffey Jan 28 '11 at 14:18
  • I see... I can't belive I can order USB bluetooth dongles for 1.5$, but can't buy some uart<>bluetooth chip for 5$ :-( – BarsMonster Jan 28 '11 at 15:54

1 Answers1

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your quickest way to communicating would be to use a BT module such as those from bluegiga or a7eng or a host of others. They typically show up (expose "profiles" in BT speak) as bluetooth serial ports to the BT world and give you a standard UART interface. These modules use the RFCOMM BT profile.

You may be able to find some with HID (mouse, kb), HSP, HFP (headset, handsfree) or other profiles, but they will be much rarer.

If you want to do more than RFCOMM you may end up having to buy/write a full HCI stack. I am not aware of any that will fit in the small Atmel uCs. btstack is a free (for non-commercial) stack that was designed for embedded systems. I have personally used it in ARM7TDMI based microcontrollers.

My advice is that unless you're willing to spend a LOT of time with it, stick with the simple RFCOMM-based BT modules. You'll save yourself a LOT of time and anguish. BT is not a simple thing to jump in to.

akohlsmith
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