Bluetooth Low Energy Semi Conductor Application Development for Windows?

[Cameron]

Hi All,

I was tasked to create a program in visual studio that can just detect the 949-NRF51822-BEACON Using the 949-NRF51-DONGLE. A simple application that detects the beacon and detects whether it is on or off. However, after looking everywhere, I can find any guide or way to do that. Heck, I cant even find a simple guide to connect the beacon to the dongle through the nRFG studio. Can anyone assist me in doing this? Or at least explain how it all works?

Cameron

[Michael Dietz]

Hey,

If you are using windows 8 or higher and the computer has a bluetooth radio I would check this out:

infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp

If you use the HID over GATT service you won't need to write any custom drivers on the windows application side.

Also you would need to connect the beacon through the dongle with Master control panel, not nRFgo studio if you go this route.

developer.mbed.org/.../

-Mike

[Cameron]

Hi Mike, thank you for a swift reply. How do I connect the beacon to the computer (I have a Bluetooth connection dongle by Canyon)? I apologise for any ignorance on the subject. Also, what is HID and GATT?

[Michael Dietz]

I'm really not sure about using a generic Bluetooth dongle to connect to the computer - someone else will have to answer that. My advice would be to use the HID over GATT example provided in the SDK (as long as you have access to windows 8 with a Bluetooth radio) and get that working as a first step. I would also recommend getting an nRF51 dongle to develop with, and then follow guides i posted above.

HID over GATT is a bluetooth service that implements the HID protocol. This is a generic protocol supported by all modern operating systems that doesnt require any custom drivers to be written. Will help you alot with development but you should read up about it online and in Nordic's infocenter.

[Cameron]

Alright, thank you for your answer mike, I will start working on that.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Cameron,

Correct me if I am wrong. My understanding is that you want to use the PC running on Windows to work as the central device and can do scanning and may be create connection to peripheral device such as the beacons.

You can try the Master Control Panel (MCP) tool that we provided here at the download tab.

An video guide is provided here.

We also provide dlls library and example so that you can build your own application on C#.

Second alternative is the BLE driver, where you can flash the dongle with S130 and control it via UART from PC. BLE driver is also provided in the link above.

Finally, if you use Windows 8, and your compute has BLE hardware, then you can use the native BLE API provided natively on Windows 8. Documentation is here. And an example provided here.