Labview and Bluetooth low energy

[stephen bates]

Hello

I have a nRF51822-EK evaluation kit, I have succesffuly installed the nRFgo studio and Seggger software so that I can detect the dongle and it shows up on device manager, however Labview does not detect the dongle using the Bluetooth discover vi or the IrDA discover vi (Matlab does not detect the dongle either). Is there a method to communicate with the dongle or indeed any Bluetooth Low energy device using Labview directly or indirectly e.g. is there as DLL file and list of function names to use.

I'm using Labivew 2013 on windows 7 if that's of any use.

Kind regards

For any help

Stephen

[Øyvind Aakvik]

To fully understand. Do you want to use LabView to control the whole kit including the Segger or by chance only the Segger? One way of using the Segger in LV is to use the "System Exec.vi" and call the nrfjprog.exe with the commands you want. I'm afraid I can't answer to the communication with the evaluation kit at this point as I've never tried that in LV.

[stephen bates]

Ultimatley I would like to be able to control the whole evaluation kit but that could begin with just the Segger I suppose. Do you have an example jpg or code or link for illustrate your suggestion. It would be much appreciated.

Regards

Stephen

[Øyvind Aakvik]

Hi. Here are some pictures of the functions I've made for communicating with the Segger using nrfjprog.exe The ".EXE PATH".vi found in the BlockDiagram is basically just containing paths to .exe file used. The input to the "System Exec" function is for the --reset; "C:.somethingsomething..\nrfjprog.exe --reset" The function with the "ERROR"-string inputted is just for error handling as the output of the command gives a string with "ERROR" in it if failing. The string actions using the "Command In"-control is to make it more bulletproof if I should forget to add a space and can probably be made better. Hope this points you in the right direction. Good luck! ;)

SeggerCommandExec.JPG

SeggerCommandExecBlockDiagram.JPG

[Marcus Johnson]

Hi Stephen! Thought I'd share some findings. First some assumptions:

• I have been fiddling with other H/W than you
• I have been using H/W setup for Bluetooth 4 (aka BLE Bluetooth Low Energy or Bluetooth Smart)
• So I am assuming the dev-kit you mention is (or can be) setup to be a Bluetooth 4 dongle

I (like you) wanted BLE on Windows 7 with labVIEW IR-vis to just work. Why doesn´t it ? 1: The LabVIEW VIs are not built on the BLE stack, they interact with the standard IR API in Windows. 2: Windows 7 does not have a native BLE stack, Windows 8.1 does.

So the only thing that worked for me was LabVIEW calling functions in a .NET-assembly (i was playing with TIs Sensortag so I found the lib here ) on top of Windows 8.1. Either with built in (Acer Iconia Tablet) BLE hardware or with a generic BLE (bluetooth v4) dongle.

Making it work on Windows 7 would be much harder. And I guess National Instruments should add BLE support, that is VIs interfacing the Windows API for BLE. But that would still only work on Windows >8.1.

Not sure if this was at all relevant to your situation, but it was to mine :)

One Love, /Marcus