BLE Hardware

The BLEBee is a Bluetooth Smart enabled XBEE form factor module based on BlueGiga’s BLE112 module. The BLEBee can be used in hardware setups, where normally an XBEE module is used. Using a BLEBee an XBee socket enabled embedded system can communicate with desktop computers, smartphones, table computers and even other embedded systems providing Bluetooth Smart aka Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or Bluetooth 4.0. Since I’m working with lot of different Arduino based boards and clones, the BLEBee was designed to run with Arduino boards.

The Arduino BLE-Shield v2.0.0 is the new Bluetooth Low Energy Shield which enables bidirectional communication from BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) enabled devices such as iOS devices (iPhone 4S, iPhone5, iPhone5s, iPhone5c, iPad3, iPad4 and the iPad Mini) but also Desktops and Noteooks to to communicate with an Arduino board. The main focus of the Arduino BLE-Shield is to communicate with an iOS Device since this is the only way to transfer data between iOS and Arduino without Jailbreaking or the need for an MFi certified hardware peripheral.

The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Shield for Arduino is a Shield that enables Arduino projects to communicate with Bluetooth Smart devices such as the iPhone 4s, iPhone5, iPad 3rd and 4th generation as well as the iPad Mini without Jailbreaking. Simply attach the BLE Shield to an Arduino and write and read data to and from the Arduino using the Serial Port which can be the hardware Serial on pins 0 and 1 or a software serial port on pins 2 and 3.

The BLE-Shield v3.0.0 is the long awaited update of the BLE-Shield v2.0.0. The BLE-Shield v3.0.0 is a Bluetooth Smart enabled BLE-Shield based on BlueGiga’s BLE113-256k module. Since I’m the Author of the BLExplr application for iOS which can be purchased from the Apple App Store, the samples on how to transfer data between an iOS device will be using this app. The following picture shows the BLE-Shield v3.0.0. The BLE-Shield can be configured to use the RX-0/TX-1 pins of the underlying Arduino as well as all other digital pins except pins 2 and 3 since these can be used to indicate a connection on the interrupt pins 2, 3 and 7.

The BLEBee v2.0.0 is the long awaited update of the well known BLEBee v1.0.0 The BLEBee v2.0.0 is a Bluetooth Smart enabled XBEE form factor module based on BlueGiga’s BLE113-256k module. The BLEBee can be used in hardware setups, where normally an XBEE module is used. Using a BLEBee an XBee socket enabled embedded system can communicate with desktop computers, smartphones, table computers and even other embedded systems providing Bluetooth Smart aka Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or Bluetooth 4.

Here the products provided under the MiKro-Labs brand are listed. Currently the following products are available: XBee Formfactor BLEBee v2.0.0 BLEBee v1.0.0 Arduino Shield Formfactor BLE-Shield v3.0.0 BLE-Shield v2.0.0 BLE-Shield v1.0.0