BlueHeron is a new Bluetooth LE (BLE) library that’s focused on communicating directly with Bluetooth modules on embedded devices like those running Nerves and on desktops and laptops. It uses the Bluetooth HCI protocol and currently supports USB Bluetooth dongles and UART-connected Bluetooth modules.
What can you do with Bluetooth LE? A lot!
We’re focused on using BLE to interact with Bluetooth-enabled devices, implement beacons, and let smartphones directly communicate with Nerves devices.
This is the beginning and the library supports a fraction of this. We do have quite a bit of the underlying infrastructure in place. Our current focus is controlling a Bluetooth light bulb since it’s inexpensive, widely available, and has a simple interface that’s representative of many Bluetooth devices.
The good news is that there is a lot of commonality in the code used to control the bulb and the other use cases. Please check out the GitHub repository for more information, the rationale for why we’re doing this, and for examples.
If there’s a particular use case that you’re interested in, we’d love your help. We chat in real-time on the #nerves-bluetooth channel on the Elixir slack.
In particular, we are very interested in examples and HCI traces of working setups to emulate.
The library doesn’t support all Bluetooth hardware yet. Please try to find ways of using the same hardware as us. While broad BT hardware support is possible and a goal, we’re focused on implementing BLE use cases on current working hardware. That means that if your Bluetooth module doesn’t work, we’re probably not going to be able to help much other than ask you to find your hardware vendor’s BT firmware .hcd file and debug from there.
We’ll be posting updates to this thread.
Hopefully a few of you can join us on this adventure.
