I’ve finally realized that BLE is probably the right technology for an iPhone/Arduino project I’m working on, so I’ve been researching product options and general BLE material. I’m particularly interested in BLEduino but their website (http://bleduino.cc/) states that it doesn’t support custom profiles even though the nRF8001 does. I am hoping somebody can verify my understanding of what this means.
Having read about GATT it seems to me that the ability to create custom profiles isn’t necessary for many (most?) purposes. Instead, it’s enough to define an additional service for the existing GATT profile. If this is correct, does anybody know if this will be possible with BLEduino? I’ve been sifting through the BLEduino code in GitHub (https://github.com/BLEduino) and see that files mentioning specific GATT services (like “Vehicle Motion”) also include comments like…
- “This file is autogenerated by nRFgo Studio 1.15.1.2691”
- "Generated with uBlue setup DLL version: 1.0.0.16855"
...which leaves me wondering if one would need tools from Nordic to add a GATT service. I hope it's not that complicated. Any thoughts on the matter?
Yes, you will be able to update the BLEduino’s custom profile. However, this requires direct access to our BLE chip (nRF8001) and initially we weren’t sure we would be able to provide that access (we need to update the website). I am happy to report though that all the necessary pins to update the BLE chip will be exposed. That being said, you will need to solder the necessary headers to interact with those pins.
Also, yes, you don’t need to create an entire profile in order to enable your use case. You don’t even need to create your own service, you could create a characteristic, which is what ultimately handles the data transfer. You could add a new characteristic to one of our existing services if that works for you. However, there is a limit to how big a profile can be, and I am afraid ours takes all the space available. Thus, you would need to remove stuff from ours in order to make room for your new characteristic/service.
Lastly, you will definitely need to use Nordic’s nRFGo Studio (https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products … Fgo-Studio) to update the profile. It’s free and simple to use, once you get the hang of it. I must admit it is kind of confusing at first. This webinar (http://goo.gl/f62QJS) will help a lot. Once you are done tweaking the profile you will need to generate the sources files and that will generate the Services.h file; that file is used by the nRF8001 to identify the different characteristics/services. Generating those files with the program is what causes the messages you saw.
I hope this helps. Thank you for your interest in the BLEduino and let us know if you have any more questions.