Dongle necessary for devices that have Bluetooth?

florianflorian
edited December 2014 in Cyton
I plan on connecting my OpenBCI to my nexus 5. Of course I could just use an USB OTG adapter to plug the dongle in, but I'd rather use the n5's Bluetooth. Is this possible without too much hassle or is there some special magic going on on the dongle?

Comments

  • adminadmin
    Hi florian,
    We are using RFduinos for our Bluetooth radio modules.
    RFduino bases their modules on Nrodic SoC radio ICs.
    The Dongle is allowing us to communicate with computers using a high-speed radio protocol called Gazelle made by Nordic and accessible through the RFduino library wrapper.
    (not trying to confuse you!)
    You could also use the RFduino BLE library (Bluetooth Low Energy) and connect wirelessly to your Nexus. Our tech will ship with firmware that communicates with the Dongle, but it's easy to change to other firmware. You can re-program the OpenBCI board over air, and it's also possible to re-program the RFduino on the OBCI board, 'cause we broke out the programming pins there. 
    Tutorials on programming the OBCI on-board RFduino will be forthcoming, but essentially, you can use our OBCI Dongle to do it, with little effort.
  • florianflorian
    Thanks, this is very helpful.
  • biomurphbiomurph Brooklyn, NY
    There's a description of how the radios are implemented on our Docs page here


    and here

  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    Joel, thanks for that cool BLE page.

    Amazing that BLE is something like 12 times slower than the dongle link, (9600 baud) and smaller packets as well.

    Do you know if there is a Bluetooth mode faster than Bluetooth Low Energy, that would be compatible with RFduino modules? (But not using the Nordic Gazelle.) The Low Energy mode makes a lot of sense for always-on type tracking devices such as wrist bands / heart monitors.

    But for EEG applications that are not 'on' continuously, perhaps a larger power draw is acceptable. Also if the devices talking like this are tablets or laptops with huge batteries -- the power consumption is much less an issue.

    I'm sure the data rate would be less than with the dongle / Gazelle, but probably greater than 9600 baud(!)

    Regards, William
  • biomurphbiomurph Brooklyn, NY
    alas, the RFduino modules are built around that Nordic SOC radio and it will either only do BLE or Gazelle. I once used the Adafruit blueFruit module, and it really sucks batteries dry... 

    The 9600 limit can be worked around with one line of code
    override_uart_limit = true; 
    Serial.begin(115200);

    but it's likely that there will be trouble with this... BLE is just  s l o w
    the other thing is cost... the RFduino was by far the cheapest, and the fact that it is Arduino IDE compatible really made it possible for us to pull off the trick of actually making this whole system work!
  • paul432paul432
    edited March 2015
    As there were no OpenBCI RFdongles available(maybe I missed them in the store) is it possible to get the RFduino from Adafruit or a supplier and put your software in to create a working RFdongle ?
    I ordered and received your latest BCI main board and would like to get it all going but will wait for more OpenBCI RFduinos to be produced if that's then only path
    Thanks, Paul
  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    All main boards ship with a dongle included. (You didn't get one?) Or are you looking to buy extra dongles?

    If your shipment didnt include a dongle, then email to [email protected] and let them know.
  • paul432paul432
    sorry.. total brain fart on my part.. I got one but didn't look in the main bag very carefully.
    I had a HAL brainwave monitor many years ago.. sort of the great-grandfather to what you guys have created.
    As a meditator and physicist I Iook forward to seeing what your great looking board will do.
    Regards,
    paul
  • ashishjainashishjain India
    edited July 2015
    Do we now have a tutorial to program the onboard RFduino to Use BLE?
  • wjcroftwjcroft Mount Shasta, CA
    edited July 2015
    @ashishjain , hi.

    So far I've not heard anybody mention implementing BLE mode. It is very slow compared to the data rate over the dongle. If you are looking to connect to Android mobiles, check


    The dongle can be used with devices that support host mode, also known as OTG (on the go) usb port. Another recent post used an external BT 3.0 module connected the OpenBCI main board; BT 3.0 gets up to about 2 megabits/sec transfers.

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