Bluetooth has never had a reputation as being easy to work with, but with the arrival of the Bluetooth LE standard, all that has changed. We look at two of the new Arduino-compatible micro-controller boards on Kickstarter with Bluetooth LE built-in.
Last time I was up in Rhode Island my good friend Brian Jepson pushed a small red box into my hands with the words, “…try this, you’ll love it.” I immediately started looking for the blue pill. However I needn’t have worried, because it turned out to be a SensorTag from Texas Instruments. It’s an interesting bit of hardware aimed squarely at simplifying smart phone developers lives when prototyping Bluetooth accessories. It can add a lot of data collection capability to your maker project quickly and cheaply.
If you’re looking to jumpstart an ambient lighting project and could use a controller with out-of-the-box iOS and Andriod support, you might want to check out the iGloLEDset from MEA Mobile. They’ve currently got a 5V kit that comes with a nice iOS/Android app to mix color gradients on-the-fly from your mobile device. They’re also working on a 12V version that should work with a wider lighting selection.
Maker Shed is now carrying RedBearLab’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Shield. It’s an inexpensive, simple, and fun way to get Arduino talking to an iPhone, iPad, or even some Macs… and probably a few Android devices as well. True to its name, BLE is low power, and it’s also easy. Check out the walkthrough in the second half of this post: with a few clicks (or taps) I got my iPad and Arduino talking the universal language of blinkenlights!
If you recently acquired an ebook reader, tablet, or smartphone and are looking to expand your technical library with quality ebook and video titles, then you’ll be happy to know that today you can save 50% on all ebooks and videos from oreilly.com. That means that copy of Encyclopedia of Electronic Components, Arduino Cookbook, Getting […]
Tangible interface researcher Andrea Bianchi, along with his colleague, Ian Oakley (University of Madeira / Carnegie Mellon Europe), have come with a novel approach to interacting with a mobile device. Using the magnetometer built into most modern smartphones, Bianchi and Oakley have created a series of tangible user interface demonstrations that go beyond what’s achievable with capacitive touch displays.
Another pint-sized all-in-one ARM dev board, called the Cubieboard, has been announced. It packs a 1Ghz ARM cortex-A8 processor, OpenGL ES, 1GB ram, HDMI out, ethernet, 2 USB Host, 1 USB OTG, SATA, IR, and headers for i2c, LVDS, and more.
