I’m familiar with the Arduino UNO’s, but new to Bees. I’m currently looking at using a SeeedStudio Bluetooth Bee w / ATmega168 for a small project. I need it to take serial in from a hacked product (low baud rate) and I’d like it to also output to an 8 bit shift register to control 8 LEDs.
I intend to also get the XBee Carrier to program the Bee, but I’d like to use the stand alone bee without the carrier in the finished project. If I do this can I use the Rx of the bee to take in the hacked data? Or do I have to use another soft serial like the one being used for the Bluetooth?
As for the 8 bit shift register, I’d like to just shift bit it out, but I2C is acceptable too. But what physical pins on the bee do I use, and what is their reference in the Arduino IDE?
And lastly, can you access/read the signal strength from the Bluetooth in the Arduino, and can you change the 30min reconnect to say 30s?
Thanks for any and all help
Tezz
So I ended up getting this awesome little board and have almost finished the project I wanted to built, just waiting on an additional stepdown power supply. I have on analog sensor that is amplified, and there is a small drop in supply voltage when I send a Bluetooth packet, which in turns ‘plucks’ the analog signal.
First off, the Arduino softserial can only handle one Rx (the one most recently setup in the code) I think you can still send on multiple soft Tx’s, but not tested. Anyway, since you need to use the softserial on Dig 2 and 3 for the bluetooth, any other serial read must be the hardward Rx or Dig Pin 0. This does work, but you must keep this disconnected while programing the board, and debugging is a bit more of a pain.
I’m using I2C, or the wire library for my 8 LED array and it works great.
As for which physical pins match the Arduino IDE, I just updated the wiki Pin definition with this:
PD4 - PD7 = Arduino IDE digital pins 4 - 7 (5,6 PWM)
PB0 , PB1 = Arduino IDE digital pins 8 , 9 (9 PWM)
PC0 - PC3 = Arduino IDE analog pins 0 - 3 (Note PC2 Disconnects the Bluetooth via a rising edge)
Still wish I knew if you can access/read the signal strength from the Bluetooth in the Arduino. Also an issue I’m currently having, when I launch a Processing program that accesses the bluetooth comm port, my connection terminates and I have to reopen it while the program is running. Works, but is annoying, and sometimes errors and I have to reset the board. Any thoughts?
Thanks for any and all help
Tezz
hey , how did you connect your device to bluetooth bee(standalone) ?maybe via jumper wire , i think you need solder it on bluetooth.
