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The Ultimate Guide to Android Bluetooth Low Energy

Originally published on May 15, 2020, and updated on April 17, 2024. What's been updated: This ultimate guide and its companion code repository now support compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion 34 (Android 14). The APIs used in this guide are from the android.bluetooth package, and not from the very similarly-named androidx.bluetooth package which is still in alpha as of the time of writing. The approaches detailed in this guide…

BLE

How GAP and GATT Work — Bluetooth Low Energy Basics

By: Punch Through

Originally Published in 2013 and Updated April 1, 2024: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) continues to evolve, and understanding the roles of the Generic Access Profile (GAP) and the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) is crucial in leveraging this…

BLE

BLE Connectivity Architecture: The Ultimate Guide

By: Alec Letourneau

Introduction Building your first connected product is no easy task. There are many wireless networking protocols, each with its benefits and tradeoffs. However, if you're interested in widespread support, including iOS or Android devices…

BLE

BLE Security: Where to Begin When Creating a Connected System

By: Ryan Kornetzke

Whether it’s your run-of-the-mill email phishing attack from a Nigerian prince, or a corporate scale data breach that leaks millions of people’s identifying information, all of us can probably recall a time where we’ve been the target of a…

BLE

BLE Sniffers: Debugging and when you may need to upgrade

By: Alec Werning

What is a Bluetooth analyzer? And why you may need one. Bluetooth protocol analyzers, also known as Bluetooth sniffers, are devices that capture and inspect radio transmissions on frequencies defined by Bluetooth specifications. Bluetooth…

BLE

The Ultimate Guide to Managing Your BLE Connection

By: Bret Hassler

Introduction One of the core aspects of designing a BLE application is determining how connections will be managed. There’s more to it than simply starting a connection whenever the devices should communicate. You must consider the…

BLE

Architecting iOS and Android Apps for IoT BLE Systems

By: Gretchen Walker

When you buy a Fitbit, you’re not just paying for the wearable hardware. You’re buying a key that unlocks access to a greater integrated system. Before you can even start using the device, you must first download the app, pair it with your…

BLE

How to Delete Bonds with the Nordic nRF5 SDK

By: Amanda Christiansen

When we talk about Bluetooth-connected devices, an inherent part of that discussion is bond management. Bond management consists of storing and deleting information about a paired device so that the pairing process between two authenticated devices…

Engineer learning about automated testing in office

BLE

The 4 Key Benefits of Automated Testing

By: Amanda Christiansen

In many ways, I’m your stereotypical software engineer. I don’t do small talk, but I can talk for days about my work and side projects. I’m easily irked by inefficiencies -- if it can be done more efficiently, why not do it that way? I also…

BLE

Maximizing BLE Throughput Part 4: Everything You Need to Know

By: Ashish Derhgawen

Welcome to part 4 of the “Maximizing BLE Throughput” blog post series! This blog post will provide the key takeaways from our previous 3 posts and also bring us up-to-date with the latest BLE spec (such as 2M PHY). Update: Please check out…

Ultimate Guide to Apple's Core Bluetooth library

BLE

The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Core Bluetooth

By: Gretchen Walker

This article assumes you know the very basics of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and iOS programming (including the delegation pattern for asynchronous calls common to many iOS native APIs), and is meant as a comprehensive guide to the ins and outs of…

BLE

Creating a BLE Peripheral with BlueZ

By: Andy Lee

While I’m fairly well-versed in working with BLE on an embedded device, I have so far had little experience with using BLE at a higher level. To help remedy this, I underwent the task of creating a BLE peripheral running a GATT server on a…

BLE

How Apple and Google’s Bluetooth Contact Tracing Framework Actually Works

By: Chee Yi Ong

The COVID-19 pandemic affects us all, with public life seeing disruptions at an unprecedented scale. To help curb the spread of the disease, Apple and Google have announced a joint effort to develop a contact tracing framework with a heavy focus on…

Punch Through team learning about 2M PHY

BLE

Bluetooth PHY – How it Works and How to Leverage it

By: Henry Anfang

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a wireless communication protocol. As with other communication protocols, BLE uses a layered design, where each layer is associated with a specific aspect of the protocol. Interlayer interaction is restricted and…

BLE

How to Use Node.js to Speed Up BLE App Development

By: Julian Hays

Imagine you are a mobile software developer that’s been tasked with implementing support for a new BLE device. But there’s one catch: The device doesn't exist yet. Not a problem! You can use bleno, a Node.js module, to mock out a BLE…

BLE

Bluetooth Low Energy Serial: A Valid Design Strategy?

By: Alec Letourneau

At some point in developing a connected product for BLE, you may have wondered, "Where is the serial profile?" Maybe you assumed that you missed it while scrolling through the long lists of profiles on the Bluetooth SIG’s website. Or, maybe you…

Python coding language on computer screen used to test Bluetooth Low Energy peripheral

BLE

Testing Bluetooth Low Energy Peripherals using a Python Script

By: Ashish Derhgawen

When developing a Bluetooth Low Energy peripheral, it’s often useful to have an app that can connect to and test the peripheral to ensure it’s working as expected. If, however, you don’t already have a companion app for the device, you’d…

BLE

Maximizing BLE Throughput Part 3: Data Length Extension (DLE)

By: Zach Michel

Welcome back BLE enthusiasts, to the 3rd installment in Punch Through’s ‘Maximizing BLE Throughput’ blog post series. BLE 5's Data Length Extensions are one of the largest performance improvements ever made to the BLE specification. Here's…

BLE

Maximizing BLE Throughput Part 2: Use Larger ATT MTU

By: Punch Through

It's commonly accepted with BLE that as throughput goes up, so does power consumption. However, by intelligently choosing your MTU size, you can actually increase throughput while also decreasing power consumption. Update: Please check out…

BLE

Developing Cross Platform BLE Apps: Our Experience

By: Punch Through

Those who have successfully developed a connected product know it is a unique struggle. The idea of a product being one physical thing, where you build it, ship it, and move on, is over. Now the hardware is only one part of the puzzle, and often…

BLE

Attribute Caching in BLE: Advantages and Pitfalls

By: Punch Through

Every OS that supports BLE caches parts of your device's profile. It's a method to save power and time by caching values that don't change very often. But what happens when the values change? If you're not careful, you can end up rendering your…

BLE

Maximizing BLE Throughput on iOS and Android

By: Punch Through

Still confused about how fast you can really send data over Bluetooth Low Energy? It's not just you. A google search will turn up many incomplete answers. Each OS and device has it’s own restrictions, such as connection interval and number of…

BLE

Testing Bluetooth Low Energy Devices

By: Punch Through

Bluetooth Low Energy is a new Bluetooth standard that is exciting for a couple reasons- it enables very low power battery applications, and it further opens the smartphone accessory market. LightBlue allows you to test and simulate Bluetooth Low…