At this point of the book, we will talk about the software tools available for the development of Bluetooth Low Energy Applications. Special Interest Group (SIG) is the group responsible for maintaining and developing the new versions of Bluetooth. Their work also defines the future of the technology. That is why when SIG decided to reinvent the Bluetooth and move to the Bluetooth Low Energy, it was well-received by the industry.
Bluetooth Developer Studio is a software tool made by SIG that helps developer to learn Bluetooth technology. SIG claims that it reduces the education time by 50% and reduces time to market by 70%. This studio is helpful for GATT-based application development as developers can use it to generate Bluetooth profiles. It also provides various built-in profiles that describe many functionalities already built for BLE. If a developer wants a functionality already developed, he can grab the profile and implement in his application.
If a developer wants to implement a functionality that does not exist already, he can build hand-coded custom profiles using Bluetooth Developer Studio. The making and maintenance of these profiles are GUI based so if developer wants to implement a pre-written profile, he just need to drag and drop it. Once the view of these profiles are made and the description, GUID and other parameters are defined, developer studio provides many plugins to make it easy to add functionality which works on any device/chipset. The plugins also enable developers to export the code for the chips from Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Arduino, Raspberry Pi and other developers.
This functionality simplifies the server side coding for the developer. Bluetooth Developers Studio also provides plugins that let you import the functionality to any Android/iOS app (as a client side application). Bluetooth Developer Studio simplifies the process of Bluetooth development and make it easily ported to any platform, firmware or software. This software is not that old, therefore many improvements are yet to made. Bluetooth Developer Studio also provides option to test the code using virtual or physical clients. The studio is supported by the Bluetooth developer's community that continuously adds new functionality (profiles/services) in the market.
Bluetooth Developer Studio comes with community supported plugins that give various additional functionalities. These are small JavaScript files that generates the code necessary to port your project on the platform of choice. We will discuss some Bluetooth Developer Studio plugins, to give reader an idea:
- Frontline: It allows developer to export the custom profiles in DecoderScript files which can be used in ComProbe Software.
- Nordic nRF5x: This plugin allows Bluetooth Development Studio to generate code for nRF52 and nRF51 series devices (nRF51 was discussed earlier in this chapter).
- Matchbox: It helps in Bluetooth client creation for any peripheral device. It also allows to make custom profiles without any code changes.
- Renesas: It helps to generate Bluetooth Profile/Service codes for Bluetooth Low Energy Protocol to run on Renesas microcontroller.
Bluetooth Developer Studio is available for free on Bluetooth SIG official website. https://www.bluetooth.com/download-developer-studio. On the other hand, the plugins can be downloaded directly from the software or from the website. A visual representation of the tool can be found here:
