Bluesmirf Gold, Terminal and XP issue SOLVED

Wireless & IoT
1

I received a Bluesmirf gold (blue antenna) as a present this week and have attempted to connect to it using hyperterminal and teraterm.

  1. Plug Bluesmirf into power source (tx and rx leads not plugged in) CTS/RTS linked up as per various instructions.

  2. Red Led is strobing quickly, then after a while goes to slow strobe

  3. Fire up bluetooth on my MSI wind clone netbook (Advent4211) and detect new device : Firefly-1566 (I forget the number)

  4. Pair to the new device. What seems odd to me though is that I don’t get asked for a passcode. Comes up as com port 41

  5. Fire up hyperterminal - 8 databits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control, ansiw, vt100, echo on, append, wrap. I’ve tried 9600 up to 11k baud.

  6. When the terminal window opens, the led on the bluesmirf goes to green but nothing responds when I type in the terminal window.

I’ve tried with teraterm and I’ve also tried pairing as swiftly as possible in case something is timing out.

My very basic nokia phone can detect and pair to the bluesmirf, asking me for a passcode if I do it in the first 60 seconds or so but obviously, my phone has no terminal capability that I know of so I can’t test it properly and the LED still flashes red.

=========================================================================================

ETA -

I booted into ubuntu (Lucid), installed the Blueman bluetooth package and minicom terminal package and checked my soldering with an ohm-meter.

Couldn’t find any soldering faults and after a few attempts, managed to send $$$ to the bluesmirf and got the magic “CMD” back!

I worry that there might have been a dodgy solder point somewhere but I really couldn’t find one.

Could I have somehow managed to reset the bluesmirf back to defaults with the tester probes touching various terminals I wonder?

End of the day though, I now have my bluesmirf and arduino radiating “Hello World!” out into the ether!

2

The red LED slowing down is normal, don’t worry about it.

Factory default baud rate/UART frame for the bluesmirf is 115200 8-N-1. Use terra term or real term, friends don’t let friends use hyperterminal. The green LED on the bluesmirf is supposed to light up once the connection between the PC and the bluesmirf is made. If you are typing $$$ and not getting a CMD response something is wrong, very wrong. You don’t always get the passcode message, someone who knows more about bluetooth than myself might be able to tell you why.

3

SFE-TS-Nate:
If you are typing $$$ and not getting a CMD response something is wrong, very wrong. You don’t always get the passcode message, someone who knows more about bluetooth than myself might be able to tell you why.

Thanks for the swift response, much appreciated.

Googling around frantically over the last day or so has come up with a lot of people complaining about the toshiba bluetooth stack and it having trouble properly interacting with a shedload of devices.

Just booted into XP and now the damned thing IS working in hyperterminal.

I shall hang my head in shame and blame my soldering or something.

Anyway, the thing’s working now. Rah!

Thanks again.

4

did u connect Tx-to-Tx and Rx-to-Rx from BlueSMiRF to Arduino? Did you give 5V or 3.3V to the Bluesmirf?

I have Lucid running as well, and got the $$$ response but not the serial response :frowning: (at both 9600 and 115200).

5

The bluesmirf should theoretically work at 3.3V, I don’t think I’ve ever tried it though.

6

SFE-TS-Nate:
The bluesmirf should theoretically work at 3.3V, I don’t think I’ve ever tried it though.

somehow now it starts to work with all the commands, serial comm etc.

I tried both 3.3v, and 5v, there doesn’t seem to be any difference.

7

butters240:

SFE-TS-Nate:
The bluesmirf should theoretically work at 3.3V, I don’t think I’ve ever tried it though.

somehow now it starts to work with all the commands, serial comm etc.

I tried both 3.3v, and 5v, there doesn’t seem to be any difference.

Same here, mine works on either of the arduino’s power output with no noticeable effect and mine just seemed to start working all of a sudden.

Maybe smirfs just need some affection before they start to talk to us? :slight_smile:

8

I am having a tough time with the BlueSmirf HID http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10938. First of all it gets connected to my laptop as a keyboard and I dont know which COM port is associated with the bluetooth module. I assume there’s none and I try to add an outgoing COM port…bump!! it says there no serial port service running on the device. Thought you guys may be able to help with your experience.