BT Dongle stalling hard before Tool Menu will open

Every time I plug in a cheap USB BT dongle and click on Tool within Arduino 1.0.1 it stalls a very long time. Then I have trouble just getting it to see COM5 serial port. I have to check refreshing. Anyone else experience this? Is it b/c I bought a cheap BT dongle off of ebay from China?

I had the same problem. I guess it is because the bluetooth is an serial device in parallel with the USB i.e. connected the same way as the USB and worked the same way. In short, it has nothing to do with being a cheap eBay job from China. It's not a problem in normal operation, you just disconnect it when you upload a sketch.

It seems like a problem with normal operation because after the sketch is uploaded, I can't access the Serial Monitor without a lot of fuss! :roll_eyes:

No it isn't. The bluetooth sends the same information as the serial monitor. If you want to read the serial monitor, why do want the bluetooth?

ok. I print to bluetooth and if bluetooth.available() then Serial.println(bluetooth.read()) for verification.

I think we might be at cross purposes here.

In my experience, the bluetooth is simply a substitute for the serial monitor and uses the same commands. You are apparently using bluetooth commands and therefore using a different system. Further, I am just doing datalogging and have not used either for two way traffic. Having said that, and because of the way it presents, I don't see a need to use serial print for confirmation of a bluetooth read. In short, there is no way, or need, to separate them.

I am using the JY-MCU cheapo eBay Bluetooth module from China to read data on my laptop using Realterm.

Most importantly, from what I see of it, the Arduino neither knows nor cares that it is talking via Bluetooth, and all the strife I had with it was fixed at the PC end.

Note that I am using Arduino IDE 1.01. If you are not, and we are at cross purposes, it might be a good idea for you to update the IDE.

Definitive fix for this: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,118440.0.html

I'll give that a shot. The last time I downloaded 1.0.3. the platform was slower that 1.0.1. so I reverted back. :%