We are in the early design phases of a new project, and are working with a hardware design firm who has proposed that we use the following chip from Nordic Semiconductor for Bluetooth connectivity to a new device we’ll be developing. This device will be controlled by a Xojo-built app, and I have not ever messed with Bluetooth stuff at all. Just wondering where to get started… anyone have any experience with this chip? I’ve looked through their docs a bit, and it appears they offer several different ways to develop for this chip, but I must admit I’m in a bit over my head so far.
Any suggestions?
https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-wireless/nRF52832
Thanks!
I had not seen this yet - and I’m a complete Bluetooth noob. Do all bluetooth devices attach to the host OS in the same way? (like a HID - no extra driver or config?) If so, your plugin looks promising.
Can anyone suggest a good “So, you want to talk to a bluetooth device, do you?” primer I can read / examine to bone up a bit on where to start?
Well, the plugin has classes to talk to bluetooth devices.
So you may be able to list a device, connect and transmit data.
But the protocols are device dependent.
It’s more like a socket type of communication.
Hi Kimball,
This is the sort of project I have developed over the years, the bluetooth part is something of a red herring I think (with the little information shown) as its the transport medium for the data, the XOJO side of the project is unlikely to even need anything to do directly with the bluetooth radio on air.
I have only looked at the linked data sheet not the full device specification so I am taking an educated guess that this device will need a lot of register setup, done by xojo, and then there will be onboard modules that can be set up to manage in hardware the data you wish to transfer.
not knowing what you are trying to achieve I can only give an example.
if you were sending packets of data that were an instrument reading to the other remote device it might be the xojo side need only run a serial port into the chip, supposing it has such a module, and the data will come out the other end.
a very simplistic example I know, but these devices are usually doing almost all the transport and protocol work in hardware and the user is just manipulating registers and reading memory, never needing to have any understanding of the transport mechanism at all.
Regards
Thanks for the explanation, Mark. I’m still quite a ways out (6-8 weeks, at least) from receiving prototype designs and specs, so I’ll be circling back to this then. For now, the basic answer to the question of “can I talk to bluetooth stuff from Xojo?” seems to be “Yup.”