Prototypes

BLEBee v0.7.1 The BLEbee is smaller version of the BLE-Shield for Arduino with additional 4 GPIO pins which are controllable via BLE Characteristics. The initial idea of the BLEbee, was to create a BLE capable module which can be used with the Arduino FIO. During development of the BLEbee I came accross the Relay Shield provided by Seeedstudio which has an XBee socket to control the Relays wirelessly. In order to control the relay Shield over Bluetooth Low Energy, I added output functionality to control the four relays which are mapped to pins 17 – 20.

The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Shield for Arduino is intended for makers to connect an Arduino project to Bluetooth Smart Ready devices such as the iPhone 4S. At this time there are some solutions available on the market to connect an iPhone to hardware projects, such as the headphone jack, Wifi or a serial cable connected to the 30-pin connector. Now is the time for new BLE accessories, since Bluetooth 4.

The BLE-Shield v2.0.0 for Arduino is the enhanced version of the initial BLE-Shield v1.0.0 which is available for sale at Seeedstudio’s Bazaar. I learned a lot from users of the first BLE-Shield how users would like to enhance it to make it easier and more flexible to use. For firmware developers which are familiar with BGScript and the CC-Debugger I added solder pins to all BLE112 pins and all Arduino Headers, so developers can add additional digital and analog I/O pins by soldering the corresponding wire as they like.

Update 2013-07-20: I published all files necessary to create such an RFID Tag Reader on github: https://github.com/michaelkroll/BT-RFID-Reader Some time ago I started a small project to create an RFID Tagreader which is connectable to iOS devices. In order to setup a bidirectional connection to a Bluetooth Accessory you must be participate in Apple’s MFi Program http://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/. In the case where only the UID of an RFID Tag should be transferred to an iOS device, an accessory could act as a Bluetooth Keyboard (which is the only Bluetooth Device which will be discovered by iOS as well as Bluetooth Headsets).

Since I created the first BLE-Shield I was thinking of an Arduino clone with integrated BLE capabilities, but I was unsure which microcontroller to use. Now you can see what I have choosen for the initial BLE-Duino board out of my hands: The ATmega32u4. The BLE-Duino should be completely SMD based. I don’t want to use and through hole parts and I really hate the big USB-A connector. I already had a board with a Lipo Header and a charging circuits, but I somehow messed it up, so I decided to go one step back on v0.

The DropBeacon is an iBeacon compatible beacon based on BlueGiga’s BLE112 module. It is not intended to be as small as possible but to be suitable for hand soldering by makers. Well the resistors, capacitors and the led is in 0603 package, but should be possible to hand solder by an experienced maker. The DropBeacon’s firmware can be updated over the air since it implements BlueGiga’s OTA service. The security mechanism which is implemented to prohibit others to modify the UUID Major and Minor IDs is a push button which changes the beacon to writable mode.

Here the prototypes provided that I developed in the past. DropBeacon MiKro BleDuino 32u4 Bluetooth RFID TagReader BLE-Shield v2.0.0 for Arduino BLE-Shield v1.0.0 for Arduino BLEbee