Espruino with HC-10, BLE

[espruino-discuss3]

Posted at 2014-02-04 by hansamann

I've seen the example for the HC-05, which I believe is not a BLE module, right? I got two of these with my kickstarter shipment.

Now I've seen there is a HC-10, too, which seems to be very compatible from the outside:
http://imall.iteadstudio.com/im130614001.html

Is there a library to use it with espruino for BLE support?

Thx
Sven

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2014-02-05 by @gfwilliams

That looks awesome. I was hoping that someone would do this.

Assuming it does what it says (BLE serial port) then it should just plug right in and work just like the HC-05 does - no drivers needed. You just connect and then program it as if you were connected to USB.

[espruino-discuss3]

Posted at 2014-02-06 by Kim

I have also been looking at the HM-10 and it does seem to be a drop-in replacement. Not tested just yet as I am still waiting on mine (and will take some time, with Chinese new year and all). One word of caution though: they come in a variety of shapes. I think the one from iMall is a good one, but I have seen plenty on e.g. ebay and aliexpress that are a good bit shorter or with all sorts of extra pins attached.

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2014-02-06 by @gfwilliams

Hi Kim, thanks. I'm a bit busy now so probably won't get a chance to properly test this, but I'd be really interested to see how you get on. This could be amazingly useful...

[espruino-discuss3]

Posted at 2014-02-26 by CWBudde

I've tried to connect the HM-10 as drop-in replacement, but it doesn't seem to be as easy as I though from the first glance. The reasons are manifold. First in order to communicate with the HM-10 module, you need to use Serial1.print() and not Serial1.println() or any other addition such as \n or \r. So for a test Serial1.print("AT") should return OK.
Next, the HM-10 is by far more complex than the HC-05 module, so you might need to spend more time configuring these modules than it takes with the HC-05 modules.
Last but not least you need a device to connect to. In my case I thought an iPhone would be enough, not confirming the version. So with my iPhone 4 (with no 's'), only Bluetooth 2.1 is supported. Also Windows 7 doesn't backported the BLE stack from Windows 8, so it's also not working, except if you are using a dongle (which itself can also be build from the HM-10 module, at least in theory, since the HM-11 uses an HM-10 module).