Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Articles

LightBlue®

LightBlue FAQ: Common Questions, Answered

By: Punch Through

Introduction LightBlue is a powerful BLE tool we created to help developers and tech enthusiasts connect, test, and troubleshoot Bluetooth Low Energy devices. Whether you’re new to LightBlue or just looking for quick answers, this FAQ has you covered. From understanding its features to solving common issues, we’ve compiled the essentials to make sure you get the most out of your experience. Table of Contents General LightBlue…

LightBlue®

How to Use LightBlue: The Go-To BLE Development Tool

By: Punch Through

Introduction Welcome to your comprehensive guide on mastering LightBlue, the essential tool for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) development. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting your BLE journey, this guide will equip you with the…

BLE

iOS 18 AccessorySetupKit: Everything BLE Developers Need To Know

By: Alec Letourneau

Apple’s WWDC 2024 brought exciting advancements for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) developers with the introduction of AccessorySetupKit in iOS 18. This new framework is designed to streamline the discovery and configuration of companion devices,…

BLE

The Ultimate Guide to Android Bluetooth Low Energy

By: Chee Yi Ong

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…

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…

Embedded

5 Tips for Building Embedded UI with LVGL and PlatformIO

By: Tyler Grunenwald

Creating user interfaces (UI) that are both seamless and intuitive is one of the trickiest hurdles faced when building custom-embedded solutions. It's not just about making things look good; it's about creating an experience that feels natural to…

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…

Hardware

Bluetooth Module vs Chip-Down: What is Best for Your Design?

By: Matt Dunham

When developing the first generation of a new product, it’s often good practice to test the market with a device that costs less to design, even if it initially costs more to build. The goal is to get the device on the market sooner. If it…

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…

Punch Through Office where engineers use rx and delegate programming on iOS

Mobile Apps

Using Rx vs Delegates with CoreBluetooth

By: Julian Hays

Reactive (or “Rx”) style programming is quickly becoming a popular design pattern in mobile development. What is it, and how does it compare to the tried-and-true delegation pattern? Should you be using Rx on your next mobile project? Follow…

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…

Engineer working on Human Interface Devices in office

Mobile Apps

How iOS and Android Handle Connections with BLE Human Interface Devices

By: Alec Letourneau

iOS and Android’s Bluetooth APIs allow apps to communicate with BLE devices. The API simplifies the way apps implement BLE and allows multiple apps to use BLE at the same time, but it also introduces many undocumented behaviors. Unfortunately,…

Mobile Apps

Unit Testing Android BLE Code with RxAndroidBle

By: Chee Yi Ong

In this post, we look at what RxAndroidBle offers as far as unit testing is concerned, and we’ll also walk through a case study of unit testing a common BLE business logic. Seasoned Android developers will no doubt have heard of RxJava—a…

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…

Team of engineers learning about background Bluetooth

Mobile Apps

Leveraging Background Bluetooth for a Great User Experience

By: Alec Letourneau

One of the most important things that users want when using a connected product is to be able to put its app in a folder and forget about it, trusting that it’ll work. Designing apps with this capability goes far beyond a product’s physical…

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…

Punch Through team discussing mobile development

Mobile Apps

3 Reasons Native iOS and Android Apps are Better for Connected Products

By: Punch Through

One decision must be made before developing a mobile app: native or hybrid. For many developers, preconceived notions lead them down the hybrid route, believing it to be cheaper and more efficient with a "one-code-fits-all" approach. However,…

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…

Mobile Apps

How to Handle iOS 13’s New Bluetooth Permissions

By: Alec Letourneau

iOS 13's new Bluetooth permissions have sparked many questions, and everyone’s concluding that Bluetooth apps are tracking them. With the inevitable backlash that will arise from this conclusion, will everyone start denying apps access to…

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…

Computer coding with Android and Bluetooth symbol - Android BLE tips

Mobile Apps

4 Tips to Make Android BLE Actually Work

By: Chee Yi Ong

Android development is hard, and it's no thanks to its relatively fragmented ecosystem and having a million OEM’s out there. Throw BLE—which is extremely hardware and Bluetooth spec. dependent!—into the mix and the platform's behavior becomes…

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…

Hardware

Harmonics Part 2 – Determining the Source of the Harmonic

By: Charlie Kellerman

This post is the second part of the two-part Harmonics & BLE blog post. We urge you to read this part if you enjoyed Harmonics Part 1 – Introduction to Harmonics & BLE or you didn’t read part 1 but are somewhat familiar with…

Hardware

Harmonics Part 1 – Introduction to Harmonics & BLE

By: Charlie Kellerman

Welcome to the first part of a two-part blog brought to you by the Punch Through Team! We hope this two-parter helps educate readers on a topic at which Punch Through excels. This blog post aims to help you better understand what harmonics are,…

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…

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LightBlue®

Introducing Cloud Connect for LightBlue® Explorer

By: Chee Yi Ong

Punch Through Design is proud to announce Cloud Connect: an exciting new feature for LightBlue®, the leading BLE debug and development tool. Cloud Connect enables users to quickly and easily send data received from your BLE devices via…

LightBlue®

Setting up Adafruit IO with LightBlue® Cloud Connect

By: Chee Yi Ong

LightBlue has the ability to send data received from your BLE devices via indication or notification to Adafruit's IO platform. You'll be prompted to provide some information for your Adafruit IO set up from within LightBlue® when you opt to…

LightBlue®

Setting up AWS IoT with LightBlue® Cloud Connect

By: Chee Yi Ong

LightBlue® Explorer has the ability to send data received from your BLE devices via indication or notification to AWS's Internet of Things (IoT) platform.You'll be prompted to provide some information for your AWS IoT set up from within…

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…

Mobile Apps

What is an iBeacon

By: Punch Through

At this year’s WWDC, Apple quietly announced one of their upcoming products for iOS 7, the iBeacon. Even if you’ve been following WWDC and the iOS 7 announcements, you might not have heard of the iBeacon. And even if you’ve heard the name,…

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…

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