Serial-to-Bluetooth

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I purchased this little Bluetooth module on eBay, another special all the way from China. It cost about £7 (delivered), but in bulk they can be bought for as little as £2. The module converts a TTL serial port such as the TX/RX pair on a PIC microcontroller to a basic Bluetooth communications link.

As long as it is paired with a computer, 'phone or PDA which supports 'Serial over Bluetooth,' a virtual serial port can be set up to allow any terminal program (or DIY software) to communicate wirelessly with the microcontroller.

I got it tested last night using the basic 8-channel ADC program on the PIC 16F690, which outputs a stream of analogue values serially, usually via RS232. Anyway, after a bit of fiddling with the settings I got a test serial program written in Pocket Zeus working on the iPaq and a stream of data arrived wirelessly via the iPaq Bluetooth.

Incredibly cool and lots of application, but starting with sending engine data via Bluetooth to the dashboard. Probably taken for granted in 2011, but something unusual in a 1988 sports car.

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