Bluetooth is Big, Really Big
Looking back over the different functionality I’ve covered in these past few posts has highlighted that Bluetooth is used for a wide range of scenarios, and it has grown massively from its simple beginnings.
It is fair to say that looking at the evolution of each specification version that more emphasis has been placed on the Bluetooth Low Energy side. This makes a lot of sense because Bluetooth really excels in these situations where energy usage is low and the devices can be quite simple and narrow in functionality. We are surrounded by Bluetooth sensors, smart lights and beacons, let alone phones, PCs and headsets. With Bluetooth’s recent release of Auracast to enable broadcast audio over Low Energy we might see a move to more device types using new Low Energy services. On the development side, Bluetooth LE is widely support across platforms whereas there are limitations with Bluetooth Classic – such as iOS supporting only MFi certified devices.
What Did We Just See?
I realised part way through this series that I hadn’t planned out a table of contents to list all of the topics and so here is a reminder of all the posts in this series:-
- Introduction
- Discovery
- Protocols, Profiles and Services
- Serial Port Profile
- Coding Bluetooth Classic
- Bluetooth Classic on iOS
- Bluetooth Low Energy
- Bluetooth Low Energy in Code
- Pairing
- Hands-free
- Command and Control
- Summary (this post)
There is still so much more that couldn’t fit into these posts so I plan to delve into so additional areas over the coming year on this blog.
Next Steps
Let me know if you have any feedback on 32feet.NET, the documentation, the samples or if there are any other topics you’d like me to take a more detailed look into. Probably the best way is to raise an issue in GitHub. Of course I’d welcome any contributions too, so pull requests would be gratefully received.
Finally, throughout my career I have been connecting people to smart devices – mostly via .NET (Xamarin/MAUI/Uno) using Bluetooth, USB and other connectivity. This has allowed me to work with specialist medical devices, ensure the safety of field workers, ensure the roads get gritted and much more. If this sounds like the sort of problem I could solve for you in 2023 please get in touch and we can talk in more detail.
In The Hand Ltd 