Bluetooth BlueSmirf woes

[richiereynolds]

Hello folks, anyone bought a BlueSmirf device recently? I'm having difficulty getting it to connect.

I power it up, red led flashes quickly for a bit ( I think this means I can enter command mode) then just flashes more slowly, I think both modes mean waiting for connection.
I'm using vista, unfortunately ...
I search for devices using my bluetooth dongle in the pc and it finds the device, called "firefly", and then I click to "pair" with the device which I assume is vista's stupid term for "connect".

I've tried this loads of times and it's failed every time but once. The time it did "pair" it created 2 com ports, one for outgoing and one for incoming, COM9 and COM10. I then tried to use COM9 in hyperterminal but it wouldn't allow this. I could connect to COM10.

The other thing is that apparently there's a pairing key, which I think just means passkey, that I can type in for authentication. I don't know if the bluesmirf device has a key or not, I found a few things saying "1234" but don't know if that's the case for mine or not and I don't get any errors that would clarify the situation.

The lack of documentation on this device is rediculous, anyone know where I can get an offical manual or datasheet? Or had similar problems and solved them?

Thanks, Richard.

[Webbot]

I found it a bit tricky too.

But I found this useful http://www.active-robots.com/products/radio-solutions/bluetooth/datasheets/bluesmift-installtion.pdf

See how the connection password is different depending on which version of hardware you've got.

[richiereynolds]

Got it! Cheers for that link, helped a lot.

Turned out that on mine, the flashing red led meant waiting, solid green meant connected and the the passkey was 1234.
But the main reason I couldn't connect was that the baud rate was 115200 on the BlueSmirf, not 9600 like some other versions.
However, the com ports that stupid vista, or probably my bluetooth dongle driver, created to communicate with the blusesmirf were both set to 9600. Once I changed these in device manager to 115200 I could then connect to those ports from a terminal.

Plus, you only need to use the "outgoing" port. The other one, I think, is for when the bluesmirf initiates a connection with the computer as oppose to me initiating the connection with it from the terminal program.

Hyperterminal is pretty awful, I was just using putty as I use that in work but I also downloaded Lynx SSc-32 terminal, it seems more specifically designed for serial communication hence all the appropriate options are very handy to find and change.

Hope that helps amyone else who buys one of these!

[Admin]

Turned out that on mine, the flashing red led meant waiting, solid green meant connected

Yeap, I had this problem too . . .

What annoys me about Sparkfun, an otherwise amazing company, is that they occasionally modify their products but don't always update documentation - or even specify the change. Usually not a big deal, but reversing LED colors, or changing pinouts, has been known to happen on products I've bought from them.