Bluart

Serial IO via a BLE connection for PlatformIO / Arduino / ESP32 environment

Getting Started

Prerequisites

You'll need a working VSCode environment with the following extensions

• PlatformIO (platformio.platformio-ide)
• Espressif IDF (espressif.esp-idf-extension)

BLE terminal Apps can be found at:

• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/bluefruit-connect/id830125974
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adafruit.bluefruit.le.connect

You'll also need some ESP32 hardware (with BLE capabilities) to run it on. I sourced an ESP32-WROOM-32D variant from Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001104664948.html

Simplest

1. Clone this entire repository to a local drive and open the folder in Visual Studio Code.
2. Build, Upload & Monitor the project from within VSCode
3. Run one of the BLE apps listed above and open a UART terminal interface.
4. Entering text in either the VSCode Terminal or the BLE terminal should be mirrored to the other device

Include in your own project

1. Copy the lib/Bluart folder (and its contents) from this repository into your PlatformIO project's lib folder.
2. Add the following code to your top level source (i.e. main.cpp)

#include <Bluart.h>               //Including Bluart.h will add the 'Blerial' instance
...
void setup() {
  ...
  BLEDevice::init("Blerial");     //Initialize the BLE Server
  Blerial.begin();                //begin the Bluart service
  ...
}

You can then read/write to the Blerial (BLE Serial) interface using Blerial.read() and Blerial.write() respectively

  ...
  char ch = Blerial.read();
  char* str[] = "This is a message";
  Blerial.write(str);
  ...