Chris O’Shea from Pixelsumo just mailed to remind me that the Bluetooth version of the Arduino boards comes out on Monday and are available here. The Arduino boards provide an easy analogue/digital interface as well as being able to be stand-alone units not needing a computer. They are also easily coded with Processing.
Documentation seems a little hard to find on it at the moment though but there is some stuff on Massimo’s blog. The main features are:
- Bluegiga WT11 Bluetooth module. This is not just another bluetooth to serial module but it sports a lot of cool features like the ability to build a small network of Arduino Bluetooth, sending and receiving objects to mobile phones, looking for bluetooth devices around itself and talking to them and it’s class 1! this means that it can communicate to a distance of 100m instead of the classic 10m (theoretically then it depends on where you are broadcasting and a lot of other factors).
- New power supply. This is using a dc-dc converter used in portable consumer electronics and can be used to power Arduino Bluetooth with batteries down to 3v. Two AAA batteries will get you going for a while! (depending on how much u use the Bluetooth transmission)
- Larger program memory. Arduino Bluetooth uses an Atmel ATmega168 with 16kb of code space instead of the classic 8kb.
So the large range, ease of use (it seems) and ability to network them looks like it could produce some interesting artworks, prototypes and projects.