Help with Bluetooth Low Energy development

[Gurpreet]

Hey everyone,

I am working on a smart watch project. Its just way of learning embedded software development. Basically its an STM32F072 processor with a 12378-03_T1-ND(digikey P/N) display and an MPU9250 9 DOF sensors as I had an evaluation board lying around. I was thinking of including wireless connectivity through a BLE module so that I could use it to sync time with my PC and transfer 9 DOF sensor data directly to PC. I have selected RN4871-I/RM130-ND(digikey P/N) module for BLE from microchip. I chose it because it is one of the smallest  and cheaper BLE modules with a shield on it and it would be easy to solder.

The problem I am having with is the software development on my PC side. According to the research i have done so far, there aren't many Python libraries which could implement BLE stack on Windows. Only library I could find is Pybluez(with an experimental BLE support). I don't wanted to plow myself in the Windows application development and learn C++ or C#(ugh). All I want is a simple python library which supports windows and let me transfer few bytes from PC to the watch ans vice-versa easily without much investment of time.

Has anyone dealt with BLE before? Please shed some light.

Thank you

[devan]

I feel your pain - a lot of Python BLE libraries are either wrappers around bluez or are specific to a single BLE dongle.

I very briefly evaluated the bleak library. The scanning API was somewhat limited, but it did seem to basically function with my existing CSR bluetooth dongle on Windows 10, so that already puts ahead of the crowd. I did not end up porting my code over from bluepy (Linux only) for business reasons, but it seems very promising for cross-platform BLE support.

As an alternative, you might give the WebBluetooth API for browsers (well, okay, just Chrome) a shot. It might seem silly to need a local webserver to host the code to interact with your BLE device, but it will run on almost any platform that has Chrome (Windows 10, Linux, macOS, Android) and it's easy to add forms and UI elements with a little HTML.

[Benta]

A big problem with network connectivity (Ethernet, WLAN, BT, BLE, you name it) is that they're all infested with patents, copyrights etc.

Not being a member of the club, meaning spending thousands of dollars, you'll not get the documentation and permission to use the technology.
The only way I've found around that is buying modules with built-in stack (=more expensive) and using something like SPP (serial port profile) for interfacing.
Let us know how you fare, it really is an issue for all.