The two “entry level” products offer HID - WT11 & WT12. Now that you sell the WT32 wouldn’t it be “relatively easy” to add one or both of these to your lineup? Along with a breakout board for us noobs…
I agree! A WT12 with breakout board would be AMAZING. You can do almost anything with that board, and all of the firmware/documentation is quite easy to access. After scouring for all kinds of Bluetooth HID options, the WT12 seems like the best thing around. You can control everything via UART commands if desired. I was experimenting with the BCM2042-based modules (see http://www.keyglove.net/2011/03/15/inte … hid-module for lots of info), but it seems you need to connect the full key matrix to all the GPIO pins. Not a fun way to integrate into a AVR-based project as an input device.
So, +1 vote from me! Bluegiga makes good products, provides easy access to their development resources, and has good customer communication (I would know).
It’s built so that you can use the two rows of pins for full access, or the UART header on the end, or both if you feel like it. It’s narrow enough to fit on a standard breadboard, and it only requires 14 rows so you can even use those tiny ones. I’ve got a few ordered as an initial test run, and I’ll be happy to make them available to others if everything works as planned.
This board had a couple of small problems (my fault for not running ERC/DRC right before sending in the order…d’oh). Two of the traces were incorrectly touching solder pads that they weren’t supposed to. The RESET button didn’t work, and the “+” and “-” power header pins were shorted together. Oops. The rest of the board worked fine after I cut a couple of traces, and all in all I’d have to say it turned out pretty well for my first attempt at a PCB:
I’ve revised it and also created a tiny UART-only board which could be great. I also changed the UART header on both new boards to match the pinout of the BlueSMiRF boards from SparkFun. The fixed revision looks almost the same:
To anyone interested, and until/unless SparkFun picks these up, I’ve finished the full BB and UART BB designs to my liking. The UART headers on both boards are pin-compatible with SparkFun’s BlueSMiRF modules. You can get them here:
There is only a very small quantity available at the moment, but I’ve already ordered a few more. I am also considering the following additions/changes:
1. Pre-mounting the WT12 module on the board along with L1 and C1 components, so it’s ready to go. This would obviously bump the price up a bit.
2. Adding a voltage regulator so you can power it with, say, 3.3v-6v or something. As it is now, you MUST supply it with 3.3v.
I’d love to know if this would be especially valuable to anyone, or if you have other features you’d like to have added in.
evanrich:
What is the purpose of L1? the bluegiga datasheets don’t show any inductors.
The WT12 design guide from Bluegiga’s tech forums contains the following:
You should make pads for two bypass capacitors near the 3V3 pin of the module. One capacitor is from 10 nF to 100 nF. The other one is meant to filter the RF and it is initially Not Placed. This capacitor is only used in the case of problems. The value is from 5 pF to 100 pF. The value varies from design to design and it must be found out experimentally. You should also place one series inductor in the supply trace. The value of the inductor is expected to be from 10 nH to 100 nH.
The example schematics in the document also show it. So I added it.
evanrich:
What is the purpose of L1? the bluegiga datasheets don’t show any inductors.
The WT12 design guide from Bluegiga’s tech forums contains the following:
You should make pads for two bypass capacitors near the 3V3 pin of the module. One capacitor is from 10 nF to 100 nF. The other one is meant to filter the RF and it is initially Not Placed. This capacitor is only used in the case of problems. The value is from 5 pF to 100 pF. The value varies from design to design and it must be found out experimentally. You should also place one series inductor in the supply trace. The value of the inductor is expected to be from 10 nH to 100 nH.
The example schematics in the document also show it. So I added it.
Jeff
Ahh saw this now…I was reading where it said that you could just power it by hooking up 3v3 and gnd…missed the whole section with the inductors and and caps.
Quick question, I see in their schematic that they have a USB port connected to the module, instead of the FTDI cable, you can just hook up a usb port to the D+ and D- lines, and use that to configure the module? right? I’m running out of space on my board, it’d be easier to hook the D+ and D- lines to a port than it would be to run the serial lines
evanrich:
Quick question, I see in their schematic that they have a USB port connected to the module, instead of the FTDI cable, you can just hook up a usb port to the D+ and D- lines, and use that to configure the module? right? I’m running out of space on my board, it’d be easier to hook the D+ and D- lines to a port than it would be to run the serial lines
I think that depends on what you want to do with the module. I haven’t ever experimented with the USB interface since I only needed UART for my design, but there is some documentation available (look for the WT USB Guide on Bluegiga’s tech forums, specifically starting at page 16 for software capabilities). I don’t think you have the same level of control though, or at least you don’t have the same convenience of using the iWRAP control interface. Page 16 has this to say:
With USB there are basically two software approaches.
WT modules run HCI firmware
WT modules run VM firmware
iWRAP firmware does not support USB at the moment. If VM firmware is required a special firmware needs to be developed using CSR BlueLab software development kit.
That’s about all I can find at the moment. It doesn’t appear that the USB lines give you the same kind of interface that the UART one does. Whether this is okay depends on your design.
I found this website http://esdn.com.au/Products/USB-WT12.html where you can get the Bluegiga module on a USB stick so you can plug it straight into a PC and be up and running quickly. There are some of these listed on Ebay at the moment.
I hope you can help me with this topic about HID, how do you suppose to send data while using the HID profile and being in data mode? I have already configure my HID profile and I have a wt32, but it also uses iWRAP. The thing is that I send the code 0x80 to the rx and the host must move the cursor 10 pixels up. But nothing happens. Do you know how to use the HID connection?
)
