Kevin Townsend - Getting Started with Bluetooth Low Energy: Tools and Techniques for Low-Power Networking

The first chapter introduces the basic concepts of the wireless standard known as Bluetooth Low Energy. It briefly describes the essentials required for understanding the most important elements of the technology and gives an outline of the different specification and chip configurations that can be found today. This chapter also introduces and explains elementary concepts fundamental to BLE, such as broadcasting, connections, and the different roles that devices can assume.This chapter focuses on the protocol stack as a whole and the different entities that belong to it. It gives an overview of each of the protocol layers and their essential features, filtering out details from the specification that are not directly relevant to BLE application developers. Each layer is described in the context of the role it assumes as part of the bigger picture, with special attention to the impact it might have in real-life scenarios.This chapter presents the Generic Access Profile (GAP), which governs the advertising process as well as connections. It gives an overview of the modes and procedures that allow devices to interact using both advertising packets to broadcast information and connections to exchange data.This chapter provides an overview of the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT), which establishes the hierarchy and format used to represent and manipulate data in BLE. It introduces the fundamental concepts of services and characteristics, as well as the procedures that allow connected devices to exchange data with each other.

This chapter provides product designers with an overview of some of the latest embedded development platforms for BLE peripherals or products.Whether youre designing your own device or designing an application that talks to existing hardware, youll almost certainly have many hours of debugging ahead of you. Debugging wireless devices is a different process than purely software-based development. This chapter presents some useful debugging tools for working with BLE and seeing whats actually being sent over the air.This chapter presents key tools for mobile application developers working with BLE. These tools will help you quickly test and verify your software or even simulate devices, if you dont have access to real hardware early in the design process.

This chapter provides a basic overview of the hardware, software, and processes required to implement Bluetooth Low Energy on the Android operating system.This chapter explores some of the key iOS 7 frameworks, classes, and methods that support BLE application development. Examples explore application development using BLE to read the battery level of a peripheral and an application that uses the iBeacon for location determination.This chapter introduces the tools needed to compile code for embedded devices. Using the nRF51822-EK discussed in with the free, open source GNU toolchain and cross-compiler for ARM, youll create a heart rate monitor example to run natively on the nRF51822 SoC.