Good day,

I'm an engineering student and I'm on my last year. For school I'm working with Arduino. But I'm new to it and I've only used it for 2 days by now.

I have an Arduino UNO board and the BLE Shield v1.0.0

Now I'm trying to find the BLE Shield with my Samsung smartphone, which uses Android OS.
My first question is: Does the BLE Shield support android?

I connected the Arduino UNO to the computer and put the BLE shield on the UNO board. Afterwards I uploaded the following code:


#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial bleShield(2, 3);

long previousMillis = 0;
long interval = 1000;

void setup()
{
// set the data rate for the SoftwareSerial port
bleShield.begin(19200);
Serial.begin(19200);
}

void loop() // run over and over
{

unsigned long currentMillis = millis();

if(currentMillis - previousMillis > interval) {
previousMillis = currentMillis;

bleShield.write(0x4D);
bleShield.write(0x2A);
bleShield.write(0x10);
bleShield.write(0x20);
}

if (bleShield.available()) {
Serial.write(bleShield.read());
}
}



No errors were found. But than when I search with my phone to the BLE shield it can't find it.

Do I need an app? I only find stuff for Apple and not for android.

Please help me, I'm very new to this stuff.

Thank you!

Bongazi

Hi Bongazi,

BLE is supported on Android v4.3+ which is currently available for a handful devices only.
That's why you might not yet find any samples and why it is currently not running on your phone.

Which Android version and phone are you using?

Cheers,
Michael.

Dear Mister Kroll,

Thank you for your reply. My phone is using the 2.3 version of Android, Gingerbread.

So I can only communicate with devices of Apple and devices which use Android 4.3?
Is there a way to communicate 2 boards of your BLE shield v1.0.0 with eachother.

Thank you,

Bongazi

Hi Bongazi,
there are some proprietary BLE APIs for some Samsung and HTC phones prior to Android4.3, but I don't know them in detail.
With the current firmware of the BLE-Shield v1.0.0 you cannot commiunicate with other Shields. I will work on a firmware supporting this during the next weeks, but I don't have a release date yet.

Cheers,
Michael.

P,S.: You can try it yourself: http://www.mkroll.mobi/?p=1012