BLUETOOTH LOW ENERGY
Bluetooth low energy is a new ultra-low power wireless technology aimed at new applications for wireless devices. The Bluetooth Specification 4.0 enables a wide range of new applications and small coin-cell powered devices to be used in the healthcare, fitness, security and home entertainment industries.
Bluetooth low energy wireless technology comes with two equally important implementation alternatives: single mode and dual mode. Single mode Bluetooth low energy is aimed for small devices like watches, sensors, etc. Dual mode is intended for devices that use both Classic Bluetooth (BR/EDR/HS) and Bluetooth Low Energy.
Some of the intended Bluetooth low energy applications/use cases are briefly described below:
Security – Proximity Use Case
This use case is built around the Proximity Profile and can be used for out-of-range detection for different alarm applications or auto-locking your phone. Another scenario could be to detect when you enter into the range of something and enable automatic opening of your home door or un-locking your car.
Remote Control
The Simple Remote Control Profile could be used to control for example your home entertainment systems, TV, set-top boxes, etc..
Sport and fitness
Sport and fitness might be the first product area to adopt Bluetooth Low Energy. Three different types of products are identified:
Cadence measurement - used to count how often something occurs. Typically, this could be to measure travel speed and peddle rotation rates on a bicycle.
Heart rate meter – measures the user’s heart rate and displays it on another device, for example a watch or a mobile phone.
Pedometer – counts the number of steps and adds time stamps to enhance the functionality compare to today’s products.
MECEL BLUETOOTH SDK - LOW ENERGY
Mecel Bluetooth Software Development Kit (SDK) includes the core layers of Bluetooth BR/EDR and the Attribute protocol, (ATT), the Security Manager Protocol (SMP) and the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) to support Dual-mode Bluetooth Low Energy.
Mecel Bluetooth SDK – BLE will support the following BLE profiles: Network Availability Profile, Personal User Interface Device Profile, Proximity Profile, Single Remote Control Profile and Time Service Profile *.
ROBUST DESIGN
Developed in ANSI-C, Mecel Bluetooth SDK has a strong emphasis on resource efficiency and reliability, and is designed to be platform independent, hence making it ideal for small embedded systems.
To ensure a verifiable and maintainable design, the implementation has been strictly modularised according to the Bluetooth system core specification. The Mecel Bluetooth SDK provides full API-access to each of the protocol layers and versatile trace features enable monitoring of all messages passed through the stack.
FULL DEBUG TRACE
With a compiler macro, the programmer can turn on the debug support that gives a trace of all messages passed between each layer of the stack as well as the signals between two peers.
The programmer has full control of the output of the trace with a set of flexible filters and a possibility to guide the output to a user defined media e.g a console window, a serial port or a file.
PROFILE TEST TOOL - MECAPP
MecApp is a versatile Windows tool for Bluetooth profile testing. The application, based on Mecel Bluetooth SDK, is widely used amongst frontier product developers as testing tool.
MecApp now also supports the Bluetooth Specification 4.0 - Bluetooth Low Energy.
Examples of profiles supported by MecApp: SPP, HFP1.5, PBAP, FTP, OPP, SAP, A2DP, AVRCP 1.4 and MAP.
*/Note: Bluetooth Low Energy profiles will be available when the Bluetooth SIG has released the official specifications.
FEATURES - MECEL BLUETOOTH SDK
- Resource Efficient
- Flexible
- Easy to maintain
- Powerful API’s
- Qualified by Bluetooth SIG
- Built-in debug support
- Comprehensive Documentation
QUALIFIED
The stack is fully qualified (including HCI, L2CAP, SDP, RFCOMM, AVDTP, AVCTP, GAP, SDAP, SPP and GAVDP) according to the Bluetooth Qualification Program, and is listed on the SIG web-site as a Bluetooth Specification 2.1+EDR compliant component (QDID: B015661).
Mecel Bluetooth SDK-BLE will be qualified against Bluetooth Specification 4.0 once the Bluetooth Specifications for Low Energy has been ratified.
WELL DOCUMENTED
The Mecel Bluetooth SDK comes with a set of documentation consisting of a Reference manual and a User’s guide.
