Much pain with the Bluetooth, Arduino, and Adafruit Bluefruit nrf8001 board

Need Help With My Project
1

All,

I was excited about Blynk but have had no luck at all getting it to work. I’ve verified the Bluetooth LE board I’m using works via a sample sketch doing simple Bluetooth Serial and connecting to Adafruit’s app but can’t get the Blynk stuff to work for anything. The closest I got to anything was this business:

     ___  __          __
   / _ )/ /_ _____  / /__
  / _  / / // / _ \/  '_/
 /____/_/\_, /_//_/_/\_\
    /___/ v0.4.8 on Arduino Uno
 
[381] Connecting...
[6380] Connecting...

I see the thing when I try to connect with the Bluetooth widget in the app, but it doesn’t have the name I tried to give it

  SerialBLE.setName("Blynk");
  SerialBLE.setDeviceName("Blynk");
  SerialBLE.setAppearance(0x0080);

Here’s some more info:

I got Arduino 1.8.0
Arduino UNOR3

BlynkApp 2.9.5

Libraries (via manager)
Blynk 0.4.8
BLEPeripheral 0.4.0
BLESerial 1.1.0

I’ve tried both the ‘nRF8001’ and ‘Adafruit_Bluefruit_LE’ examples.

I notice ‘BLESerial.cpp’ and ‘BLESerial.h’ files w/ these as apposed to just using the BLESerial 1.1.0.

Anyhow, am I just totally barking up the wrong tree trying to use this combo with Blynk? Is the Bluetooth extra Beta so the rockiness is just part of the territory? It’s been kind of an ordeal compared to the ‘ease’ advertised…

2

As I understand it, BT/BLE is “Beta”… just how Beta only the developers know :wink:

I am unfamiliar with that Bluefruit board, but based on this example sketch https://examples.blynk.cc/?board=Arduino%20Uno&shield=nRF8001&example=GettingStarted%2FBlynkBlink It appears those commands you showed will set up the board… but only assuming it is connected correctly to the UNO. Have you been able to confirm if these are the correct pins for your particular Bluefruit board?

// define pins (varies per shield/board)
#define BLE_REQ   10
#define BLE_RDY   2
#define BLE_RST   9

// create ble serial instance, see pinouts above
BLESerial SerialBLE(BLE_REQ, BLE_RDY, BLE_RST);
1 Like
3

One more report of having troubles connecting Adafruit Bluefruit nRF8001 boards. We have such ticket on iOS and I think will be able to test such setup soon.

1 Like
4

Oh it’s pretty beta :slight_smile: A consideration here is I’m trying to use it for an educational project so (relative) simplicity would be good. On the other hand I’d like to sort it out either way.

To answer your question that’s how I wired it up. I verified it functions properly via some sample code and the Adafruit ‘Bluefruit’ app (which may be what I end up using. The ‘Blynk’ interface would be preferred though, nice variety of widgets).

Another thing - even when I can get the Bluetooth Blynk widget to see it, it shows the name I used for the other example. So not even that is ‘taking’, apparently…