Bluetooth development chips

What quantities are you looking at? 92 pounds is expensive indeed. We pay about 65 euro's for that module in small qty's (20's), which is appr. 43 ukp without VAT.

Meindert

Indeed a significant difference in prices. Since I am just exploring ideas, I am not sure about the quantity. But if we consider employing the technology in toll plazas (is it feasible?) on highways and motorways as well as the vehicles, the quantity will significantly increase to thousands of units.

Any effort to implement it in home appliances and automation would dictate a much simpler and cheaper variant. Any ideas on what type of chips are out there meeting these criteria?

Mak

Bluetooth dongles are pretty reasonable in the UK (£15 GBP). Why not try selecting a device that has open linux support, then reverse engineering from there.

Bluetooth DEVKITs were very expensive 12-18months ago, so I opted to go for full wireless 802.11b and WLUSB instead.

Enjoy.

At that quantity, the price of a TRBLU20 module (serial I/O at TTL level) is about 42 euro at a decent distributor.

Remember, if you go your own route with Bluetooth, you're facing hugh certification costs.

Meindert

A cheap dongle requires a USB host and enough power to run the entire BT stack. The TDK TRBLU20 modules have this stack internal, which allows your host to be much much simpler and cheaper. Oh, and the TRBLU20 modules are class 1 (100m range), the cheap USB dongles are mostly class 2 (10m range).

Meindert

Mak, Meindert Sprang has a fair point, my suggestion is based on a USB host (like you mentioned). If you are homebrewing, deconstructing a bluetooth dongle with opensource drivers makes good financial sense. Remember: interfacing with USB can occur over copper tracks...

The BT stack is generic for use in various applications, you should feel free to extract what ever areas of the stack apply to your application. Others have implemented the stack on micro-controllers long before now, size and complexity depends on YOUR APPLICATION.

Er, yes Class1 and Class2 USBs at less than 92 euro.

If you are time limited and need to get a product to market, go with the TDK option. Otherwise use that huge PC engine to reduce your R&D costs.

IMHO: If certification is important, then the TRBLU20 represents a budget solution to your application. If your homebrewing, anything at quantity may sound like a bad idea.

Sigh, Thanks for all the ideas. I was thinking in the lines of getting a bluetooth protocol chip (any suggestions on that?) and designing an RF antenna on my own, pretty much like reverse engineering the serial module and provide USB circuitry to that (any chips used commercially which implement USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 protocol on hardware?), however the certification costs is a practical issue.

TDK's module is just too expensive to design a simple home automation circuit (yes 42 Euros are a LOT :) )

Should I just start looking for AM RX/TX circuits, rough requirements could be 1kbits of data transferred at 1kbps or higher.

Thanks,

Mak

Hello,

perhaps have a look at chipcon's chips (perhaps especially the CC2420). If you need links to datasheets, have a look at my page at

They transfer 250 kbit/s, around 70 Meters i think, support encryption if needed. Price is another topic: I bought a few modules from microchip, with completely soldered RF part including antenna, so only need to connect it to your microcontroller via a SPI port. Payed 30 Euro per module. If you buy only the chips itself, you get it much cheaper. Pay attention that you can use it (perhaps inofficially, illegal) in simple Tx / Rx mode, or you need a Zigbee stack and ceritfication too.

Regards,

Martin

Hi,

Try

They have a bluetooth module that includes the stack for ZAR 250, which is about GBP 20. I am sure you should be able to find the same module in the UK for an even lower price.

Regards Anton Erasmus