Passive Bluetooth to Monitor active Devices

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

Hi All,

I'm fairly new to Arduino (I have an Uno), having done a few of the sample projects I'd like to look into wireless technologies, specifically WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC (which I believe is just a different form of RFID?)

To start, I'd really like to be able to detect bluetooth devices and report some info on them like signal strength, device ID, etc... Most of the bluetooth applications/totorials I've seen online have been of the connect Arduino to computer using bluetooth, I'd like to use the bluetooth device on the arduino to detect other bluetooth devices and read data back using the USB cable or ethernet to the computer. I've also seen a plethora of bluetooth PCBs for sale but don't know which would give me this ability.

Can anyone recommend a course of action?

Many thanks,
Andy

2

Bluetooth isn't just Bluetooth, there a plethora of different profiles, most standardised, others not. Most of the bluetooth hardware available for the Arduino just knows the serial profile, ignoring all the others. I don't know (haven't tried yet) if such a hardware would list a device with just A2DP profile (music streaming) when scanning.

The (embedded) module with support for most of the popular bluetooth profiles I found, is the bluegiga series (WT11i as an example). With such a module (I haven't found a shield with it yet) you probably have the greatest flexibility in doing bluetooth stuff. A lot of the real cheap modules are difficult to handle and have a very limited transmission range.