EE Bookshelf: Bluetooth Low Energy – The Developer’s Handbook
While Bluetooth has been around forever, Bluetooth Low Energy (AKA Bluetooth Smart) is a complete rethink of short range, low power wireless communication, and there’s a huge amount of interesting around this new standard, as well as some interesting new chips coming out that use it. BLE is supported by iOS, Android (as of version 4.3), Windows Phone, Windows 8, OSX, Linux (via BlueZ) … just about anything you’re likely to have in your pocket, and a decent chance something you have on your desk. BLE is definately on our radar in house. That’s a large part of the appeal … as a technology, it has a very low barrier to entry to a lot of devices that people already own and are comfortable using, without the cost and power issues of other standards like Wifi.
If you’re looking to get a top level view of what’s different about BLE, Bluetooth Low Energy: The Developper’s Handbook by Robin Heydon is a good start. The author was involved in the design of BLE, so he knows his material, but it’s also very accessible even if you aren’t coming from a Bluetooth or wireless background.
If you have any other good BLE resources, feel free to post them up in the comments below!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
