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iBluetooth is easy | |
iFebruary 24th, 2018 | |
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i | |
iI ran across a little demo project the other day showing how a $7 | |
icomponent could connect an Arduino to any bluetooth device. It was | |
ia bit of a revelation for me. I had assumed that there was a lot | |
igoing on in Bluetooth land, and that it wasn't worth the effort | |
idiving into all the protocol nonsense. It turns out it's | |
ia glorified serial port. | |
i | |
iEnter the HC-05 and it's brother the HC-06. These little 4-pin | |
icomponents handle all the parts of Bluetooth you don't care about. | |
iHere's what you get: 5V input, Ground, Tx, Rx. Sound familiar? | |
i | |
iI plopped a Lucky Shield onto my Arduino so I had some sensors | |
igoing, ran the example Lucky Shield Test, which outputs a bunch of | |
idata from those sensors to the Serial debug panel, and plugged in | |
ia HC-06. I paired the HC-06 with my phone by entering the default | |
i1234 code. Then I opened up a serial debugger on my phone. | |
i | |
iI was pleasently greeted by a bunch of information about the | |
ilight, humidity, air pressure, and so on. No fuss, no muss. I love | |
iit when things just work. | |
i | |
iThe HC-05 and HC-06 are very similar in features and price. The | |
iHC-05 can do more, act as a master bluetooth device instead of | |
ia slave, and send some funky control stuff that I don't care | |
iabout. I got the HC-06 because I found one on Amazon Prime and | |
iI was impatient. I saw these in bulk on Alibaba for under $2. | |
i | |
iI'm going to rig up a little voltage divider circuit with | |
ia handful of push buttons, flash it onto an ATTiny85, and try to | |
idesign and print a PCB for the unit. It'll connect with the HC-06, | |
iand eventually I'll 3D print a case for it. I want a little | |
icomponent based, battery powered, bluetooth button controller that | |
iI can use for random acts of silliness. | |
i | |
iIn other, less fun, news, my latest raspberry pi zero w is | |
irefusing to play nice with the wifi. I set it up identically to | |
ithe last one which worked flawlessly, but nada. I'm going to bring | |
iit in to work and swap the SD card I have in the working one to | |
icheck if the problem is hardware related or software caused. | |
i | |
iMoops. | |
i | |