Adding Bluetooth to Vex

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Vex13

3) If you already have the desired behavior occuring between the pc and micro via a thethered link, add a bluetooth link between the pc and programming dongle should be pretty much plug and play (add the module and pc dongle, set up the link, adn we're set). Right? Or am I being too naive here?

I think that this means you are using an RS-232 port on the VEX side and on the PC side. So you are close to being able to just replace the cable with 2 AirCables or BrandX radios, but you are not completely sure of success.

It depends on if the PC/VEX link are using other RS-232 signals for timing etc. For example they could be using anotehr wire for flow control or timing. This may or may not work, depending on the signals you need the radios to duplicate and how critical the timing is.

Even if you are only using 3 wires (TX, RX & GND), you are still not home free. We have had cases were we can get a boot loader to work via a cable and had no success downloading code via a Bluetooth radio set. We think this is due to some critical timing issues but we are not 100% sure of the reason for failure. We do know that Bluetooth is pretty good at making sure that data sent on one end gets to the other side, but it is not so good at meeting critical timing issues.

Good Luck.

Joe J.