How do I send data from an Arduino to my laptop using BLE shield?

[Rasik]

I'm trying to set up a network where 1 - 4 BLE devices wirelessly talk to a computer. I'm using an arduino connected to the BLE shield. The computer is a Winows 7 laptop with a bluetooth 4.0 dongle attached to it.

I want data from the sensors connected to the arduino to be sent to the computer, for example, when a button is pressed etc.

How would I go about doing this?

[Ole Morten]

If you need this for a test or development setup, you could consider using multiple PCA10000 Development Dongles and multiple instances of an application using the Master Emulator API.

However, this is not a solution for end-user products, as the Master Emulator is not a qualified Central.

If you need this for such product, I think your best option is to implement a custom Central solution based on a dongle using the S120 Central SoftDevice, and some UART protocol to talk between a PC application and the nRF51822. You could also try using a regular Bluetooth 4.0 capable dongle, but I'm afraid I don't really know about any API that allows you writing custom applications using such dongle on Windows 7.