Hi everyone,

finally I decided to work a little on the newly arrived HC-05 Bluetooth module and Arduino.

Connecting to the Arduino is pretty simple: you only need 4 wires that connect 5v power (+ and ground) and serial TX/RX.

I used the example sketch that comes with the development platform and it works like a charm. I tested it with a Bluetooth Terminal app for Android and I’m able to send and receive serial data stream.

Now I only have to integrate the bluetooth serial support on the KX3 Companion (and KX3 KeyApp) and I’ll be able to offer a cheap solution for wireless serial communication.

That is not huge news but it can be if you think that this MAY open the doors to the development of the KX3 Companion (and KX3 KeyApp :D) on iOS. Unfortunately I don’t think that Apple allows serial over Bluetooth either. Probably they only allow via WiFi and BLE. I have to investigate on that.

If they don’t, then the cheapest and quickest way to have a wireless serial solution for iOS would be a Raspberry Pi with a WiFi USB key. I’m about to write a simple Bash script that download and installs everything needed so to have a Raspi automatically starting as a serial Wifi – USB gateway as described in my page here.

As soon as everything is ready I’ll release the updated Android version of the apps (so that they support BT Serial as well), publish schemas, Arduino code, etc.

In September then I’ll start developing the iOS versions hoping to have them ready for iOS 8 release in autumn.

That’s all for today.

72/73, Andrea IU4APC