With consumers’ desire for the latest gadgets greater than ever before, pressure is on developers not to dawdle. With this in mind, last year the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) unveiled Bluetooth Developer Studio, a powerful tool aimed at helping developers bring their Bluetooth® wireless technology products to market quickly.
The SIG recognises there is a number of specification guidelines for the creation of custom Bluetooth profiles, and with developers often struggling to find time to read up on the guidelines, the SIG wanted to simplify, and speed up, the development process. Cue the Bluetooth Developer Studio.
Bluetooth Developer Studio allows users to generate code for peripherals—for example, sensors—while helping them test their implementation, and produce reports. It is also backed by an online repository where they can publish their own profile design to share with others. This improves the development process while saving a lot of time.
Since launching the tool, developers particularly like the code generation feature. This uses a library of “plug-in” components which generate code for a specific target platform. Developers can add their own plug-ins to the library by using the Developer Studio text template processing engine and JavaScript APIs.
Additional key features include:
- Tutorials and code samples—the tool was designed so developers only need to learn what they need. They gain access to video tutorials so it feels like they’re receiving one-to-one advice and code samples to jumpstart their work
- Drag and drop— this function makes designing the profile easy for developers. It allows developers to literally drag and drop from a rich collection of predefined components, some of which have been created and shared by other users of the tool
- Collaboration—as mentioned in the point above about sharing components, the tool enables developers to learn from each other. They can share custom Bluetooth profile designs to ensure greater consistency, and improve the user experience
- Test, test, test—the beauty of the tool is that it enables developers to uncover issues quickly with real-time testing involving both virtual and physical devices. There’s also the ability to test solutions using device emulation scripts from right inside the tool
To really highlight the benefits of Bluetooth Developer Studio, the SIG used it to design the Bluetooth profile for the BBC micro:bit, a programmable device for school children in the UK. The profile designer capability was used to define Bluetooth wireless access to the micro:bit sensors and other features, including its accelerometer, magnetometer and temperature sensors. The initial version of the profile design was created in a matter of days, and the tool made revisions to the design as the micro:bit project progressed a breeze to define.
In summary, Bluetooth Developer Studio helps developers bring their innovations to life quickly, all with an easy to use tool. But, this isn’t the end, the SIG is constantly looking to improve the tools and other resources they provide to product designers and developers to help them get a high quality product to the market quickly.
You can download the Bluetooth Developer Studio free of charge here.