Status lights came on but I could not for the life of me figure out how to work it. When I plugged the module in it flat out didn't work. I thought it would be easy, fun and cheep to set up a Bluetooth module with my Arduino so I purchased a $10 Bluetooth module from China. I was instantly draw to Bluetooth because it was something that I was similar with, I use Bluetooth to play music, and even use my PS3. I also thought I would take a look at Bluetooth because it is so widly supported by nearly any phone, laptop, tablet and netbook on the market. However, there was not too much documentation on the Nordic modules as there was on XBee, or even WiFly for that matter. But I soon found Nordic which drew my attention away from XBee. My next thought was XBee because of it's support in the Arduino community and it's extremely long range. I tried this out with one of my colleagues WiFly modules, but it was so complicated I gave up after a week of having nothing more than a nice terminal connection over the wifi. I thought it would be super awesome to be able to create a little web page I could access from my smartphone and just use an html form to send a signal to the Arduino. I did a lot of researching the different wireless technologies for my launcher. I thought I would put all of what I found from the different radios onto a single form so other people, like me, can come and use this as a reference. I've been working on making a wireless method of launching model rockets which has lead me to a lot of research for different wireless radios. This is a very slow and tedius process, I do not know when I will be able to get to the xbee units.I am really new to the who Arduino community.

I purchased some of the usb tranceiver carrier boards from selmaware, they had drivers for the unit, so I will only have to write the computer app.įrom a programming standpoint bluetooth is a positive because of the software that comes with the available dongles, so there would be less work in that area. And you will have to write your own software driver for that unit. Now, the thing to consider with xbee, they have no commercially made dongles, so you will have to come up with a transceiver module for your computer.

There is a member by the name of Joe, which uses xbee exclusively, and he really loves the units. If you need more info for xbee, goto the irobot create forum, and look for the topics concerning xbee. A warning for the people that are looking at the supercheap usb dongles with antennas on ebay, those are phony antennas, and the software is just barelly passable. I like the bluesoleil software, it is a big plus. The dongle does not have an antenna, so that makes a big difference in the range, and the signals going through the walls. I am using the unit from sparkfun, and a bluesoleil usb dongle.

Wifi vs bluetooth vs xbee