Bluetooth Developer Studio vs nRFgo Studio

[Punit]

I am just beginning to develop with BLE.I came across the nRFgo Studio through Nordic and BDS through the bluetooth SIG.

1]What are similarities/differences between the two?

2]Which of the above is more mainstream and how do they make BLE development easier if one doesn't want to go too much in detail with writing code?

I am ok with coding as well, but open to trying tools if they make development faster and error free.

[Michael Dietz]

nRFgo Studio is used to flash your nRF5x series device with your SoftDevice/Application .hex files.

Bluetooth Developer Studio is a tool to help you create your BLE profiles, services and characteristics.

You would use BDS to intuitively create the GATT hierarchy of your BLE profile. Then you would use this generated code in your project. After you compile the code you would upload that code to your device with nRFGo studio.

Edit: nRFgo Studio is used by a lot of people who are getting started with developing on nRF5x devices. Ideally you would flash the device from your IDE or using nrfjprog (the more powerful command line equivalent of nRFgo Studio) to be more efficient. But nRFgo Studio is GUI based and a bit easier to use for beginners.

BDS is not mainstream. It is pretty new and I don't know how well supported/tested it is with our device/SDK. I'd recommend just sticking with Nordic's InfoCenter, SDK and devzone for now. Once you are comfortable with all this and have done some development then take a quick look at BDS and see if it makes your life easier.

[Bill Siever]

From my point of view, one of the greatest potential strengths of BDS is having a standard way to document custom services/characteristics/etc. and also having a standard file format to exchange this documentation. That being said, the last time I used it I found it a bit clunky.

BDS may be a great tool for rapid prototyping if/when the ability to export prototype code is robust enough, but to really use it effectively with Nordic devices you'll still have to know many of the low level details of the API (that you'll learn by following Michael's suggestions).