Chapter 16. Bluetooth Low Energy

So far we’ve looked at all kinds of wireless communication, but we’ve been missing one very common type: Bluetooth.

Bluetooth works on the 2.4GHz radio band like WiFi does, but it’s designed for lower power usage, lower bandwidth, and shorter communication distance than WiFi. Probably the most common use of Bluetooth is now in wireless headphones and speakers.

However, there is a problem. Bluetooth is more power efficient than WiFi, but it’s not that efficient, and it’s still pretty complicated to implement. It usually requires one microcontroller to handle Bluetooth, and another to do everything else (like interacting with the device’s user).

Bluetooth Low Energy was created to try to fill that gap. It is very ...

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