The Arduino Bluetooth board
There have been a number of questions about the new Arduino BT board.
Finally it has been manufactured and it will be shipping soon.
Why did it take so long?
First we made many prototypes… some of them go back more than a year ago. We tried many Bluetooth modules but none of them seem to have enough features to be the right one….
for example in this early prototype
the module was a simple bluetooth to serial module but still costed 25 EUR alone. then we realised that the power supply was wasting too much energy for a board that,being wireless, would be mostly battery powered.
Back to the drawing board… we tried quite a bit more modules then we found the WT11 from Bluegiga that is quite full featured and powerful. The module is well documented and does much more than just replacing a serial connection. we tried it and we liked it… we then moved on to make our internal prototypes using the red boards that you can see here.
Now they’re ready and we’re just tweaking the bootloader to make sure it’s reliable… once it’s programmed it’s hard to go back.
These are the main features the board has:
- Bluegiga WT11 Bluetooth module. This is not just another bluetooth to serial module but it sports a lot of cool features like the ability to build a small network of Arduino Bluetooth, sending and receiving objects to mobile phones, looking for bluetooth devices around itself and talking to them and it’s class 1! this means that it can communicate to a distance of 100m instead of the classic 10m (theoretically then it depends on where you are broadcasting and a lot of other factors).
- New power supply. This is using a dc-dc converter used in portable consumer electronics and can be used to power Arduino Bluetooth with batteries down to 3v. Two AAA batteries will get you going for a while! (depending on how much u use the Bluetooth transmission)
- Larger program memory. Arduino Bluetooth uses an Atmel ATmega168 with 16kb of code space instead of the classic 8kb.
I hope you’ll enjoy it…
Massimo
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Hi Massimo ,
I´m very impressed with the Arduino project. I found it on the net recently, assembled a prototype using an stk500 and discovered the power of the IDE. Do you have plans to have the Arduino boards distributed in Brasil ? Is there some kind of translation to Portuguese in progress ?
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[...] tinker.it » Blog Archive » The Arduino Bluetooth board Coming soon… Includes ATmega168 with 16kbytes for code, and a DC-DC converter with ability to run at 3V. (tags: arduino hardware bluetooth programming embedded design wiring electronics processing prototyping atmel microcontroller) [...]
Hi, I just found that you have bluetooth boards also. I really want to order a whole bunch of them, do you prices and a timetable for when one might get their gurbby hands on one?
They are sowing up on the web shop tonight. http://pcb-europe.net/catalog/index.php?cPath=29
price is 79EUR + VAT quantity 1 and 77EUR +VAT for 10pieces of more.
massimo
I would like to order some but the webform keeps putting 79 into my basket, I want a few but 79 is a touch over my budget :)
Bluetooth Arduino…
Chris O’Shea just mailed to remind me that the Bluetooth version of the Arduino boards comes out on Monday. It’s a lot more expensive (79 Euros) but it can communicate to other Bluetooth devices, which might be handy. The link to that is he…
I’am very impressed too, but is there no USB-Port on the new Arduino BT? And have you got any tutorials up, yet? That would be great :)
Hello
The Bluetooth module replaces the USB connection
we have some basic stuff appearing on the main arduino website
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardBluetooth
do you own one?
Thats pretty awesome to program it over Bluetooth :) .. but is it possible to have multiple connections from cellphones and one (Bluetooth)connection to a PC for receiving the data (if a custom java-app is running on the cell’s)? Like a processing-application in which some cellphones control visual agents on a screen?
I ordered my Arduino BT last week and it will arrive within the next few days *yay*
My Bluetooth Arduino has just arrived (thanks ICO). Will be starting to experiment with it next week.
Here is a photo of the board
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsumo/379276201/
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