Bluetooth Developer
Starter Kit 3.2

If you’re new to developing Bluetooth® applications or firmware, the Bluetooth Developer Starter Kit (BDSK) is the perfect resource for you. It consists of several coding projects for you to complete, starting with an Arduino 101 project, which leads you one step at a time through the process of designing and implementing a custom Bluetooth profile on the Arduino. This allows a smartphone application to control a custom circuit connected to the Arduino.

Once you’ve completed the Arduino project, you can move on to completing a smartphone project for Android or iOS or both. Once again, you’re led one step at a time through coding an application which will use Bluetooth to control the Arduino project.

The emphasis of BDSK is to give a hands-on learning experience, but don’t worry, we don’t skimp on the theory. The Arduino project will introduce you to the key theoretical concepts and terminology too. You’ll also get to use one of the Bluetooth SIG’s flagship developer tools, Bluetooth Developer Studio.

BDSK is a great way to learn and it’s a whole lot of fun.

What’s New in Version 3

We just released version 3 of BDSK. Here are the key changes in the release:

1. The Android project has been completely rewritten and its associated lab instructions too. The new Android project is based upon the latest Android APIs which underwent significant change at Android 5. The old BDSK Android project was based on the deprecated Android 4.x APIs.
2. The iOS project has also been rewritten, along with its lab instructions. Our old BDSK iOS project was written in Objective-C, a language which Apple are moving away from. The replacement is written in Apple’s newer (and much nicer!) programming language, Swift.
3. We’ve also retired a number of the BDSK v2 smartphone application labs and designated them “legacy”. These are projects for less popular platforms including Windows 8.1 and BlackBerry 10. We’ve retained the solution code for those labs in a new “legacy” folder so if you do have an interest in those platforms, the information is still there. We just won’t be maintaining those resources going forwards. Also retired are the old Android 4.x projects and the iOS Objective-C projects.

What are you waiting for?

BDSK is a great way to learn, especially if, like me, you thrive on a hands-on approach to learning. Download the Bluetooth^® Developer Starter Kit today and get coding with Bluetooth!