My company makes an embedded device which normally is controlled by a wintel host via RS232. The communication method is 8-bit binary, packet based, with no hardware flow-control (3-wire interface).
I now have a new requirement: My device must communicate with a bluetooth enabled wireless host. The host may be either a bluetooth enabled wintel box(running winxp) or a PocketPC(windows CE).
I gather I should use a "dongle" to convert Bluetooth to RS232 and use the RFCOMM bluetooth layer for host-side programming. I have two questions:
a) Which dongle should I use to convert Bluetooth to RS232? I have found several vendors which sell cable-replacement type devices (using the RFCOMM protocol) which convert RS232 to bluetooth or visa versa. Any ideas which device I should choose? Quantity is low so I'm looking for reliability over price for now...
b) How to do the host-side programming. I'm familiar with the basic win32 api+Microsoft 6.0 c++ tools, but not with networking or the bluetooth api(s). Which API to use? Can the RFCOMM protocol be used from win32? and wince 3.0?
Any help is greatly appreceated