Contents
Published: April 29, 2024
20 min read
In this article, you'll learn:
1
📚 General BLE Facts
2
⚙️ BLE Technical Facts
3
🤖 BLE FAQ: Beacons and iBeacons
4
🗂 Our Expertise in BLE Integrations
5
💡 Takeaways
To start with, Bluetooth was initiated as a short-range technology to replace nodes and wires as a connection method. According to Statista the current number of shipped Bluetooth devices isn’t only presented in billions but is also growing continuously from year to year. Thus proving that the relevance of Bluetooth technology isn’t going to leave global markets in near future.
BLE Ultimate Guide (image by Andrew Rosek)
Bluetooth as technology exists in two types:
Despite BLE devices being relatively new to the market, the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) report states that 1.8 billion BLE single-mode devices will ship in 2024 alone.
In this article, the CTO of Stormotion, Oleksii Bulavka, will share his knowledge about Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). We’ll take a deeper look specifically at the basics of BLE, determine its technical characteristics, notice both the benefits and limitations of BLE products, and provide the answers to the most frequently asked questions before integrating it into your project.
In this section, we'll cover the essentials of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), including its definition, advantages, and limitations. We'll also discuss its relationship with classic Bluetooth, network setup, and similar wireless protocols.
Bluetooth Low Energy is a wireless technology introduced in Bluetooth 4.0, with the purpose of creating connections that compared to the Classic Bluetooth technology:
Wibree is a technology with extremely low power consumption and a 10-meter range which is known as the first version of Low Energy Bluetooth. In 2009 it was rebranded as Bluetooth Low Energy and still functions under this name.
Bluetooth of any type plays a crucial role in developing and connecting IoT applications (image by Josh Warren)
An example of BLE application to control heat level of the infra-heated vest (image by Ten Times Better)
Despite sharing the brand and specifications, Classic Bluetooth and low power Bluetooth aren’t compatible, a consideration important in the prototyping steps in IoT. It means that it’s impossible to connect devices directly.
To avoid Bluetooth LE vs Classic compatibility issues many smartphone-like gadgets tend to implement both of these technologies thus enabling communication with every side. Smartphones with such Bluetooth chipsets are called Dual Mode Bluetooth devices and are able to work with both Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth Classic. According to the Bluetooth SIG report, each key platform device supports BLE Bluetooth and Classic Bluetooth.
Based on the experience of our CTO, it’s impossible to say which of the technologies is “better” or “worse” in general. The answer depends on your needs: whether you need to have a continuous data transfer, transmit large data packets, have the possibility to frequently recharge your device, etc.
Let’s see some examples of goals and determine the technology that fits better in distinct cases:
📱 Task examples | 📳 Suitable technology |
---|---|
Motion sensors | BLE |
Wearable pedometers, heart rate monitors | |
Baby monitors, small walkie-talkies | |
Smart House sensors | |
Smart sensors for cars | |
Applications with a file-transferring feature | Bluetooth Classic |
Applications with a quality audio streaming feature | |
Wireless PC peripherals | |
Printer-like peripheral machines |
Let’s talk about the main use cases of BLE enabled devices.
Applications | Use Cases |
---|---|
Consumer electronics | Our smart watches, fitness devices, and other smart appliances which monitor our heart rate, steps, and other activities are compatible with our mobile phones, tablets, and laptops thanks to BLE technology. These Bluetooth LE devices, which often have low power consumption due to their sleep mode feature, prioritize basic functions like step tracking, heart rate monitoring, or blood pressure monitoring. Constant Bluetooth transmission of data to a paired phone would drain battery power quickly. BLE helps increase the time during which these devices work, making it an ideal solution. |
Audio devices | While we're accustomed to wireless headphones primarily using Bluetooth Classic, a recent advancement in Bluetooth LE device is LE Audio. This innovation brings several benefits, such as improved audio quality, reduced power consumption, and compatibility with hearing aids, distinguishing it from traditional Bluetooth technology. |
Smart house system | Bluetooth Low Energy devices play a significant role in the home automation market, facilitating the operation of various devices such as smart lights, smart locks, thermostats, and temperature sensors. These devices leverage BLE to offer functionalities like remote control, automation, and monitoring of humidity, temperature, and other environmental factors, enhancing convenience and security for homeowners. |
Healthcare management | Emerging smart contact tracing systems use BLE technology to combat the spread of infectious diseases. Rather than relying on manual data reporting, these systems continuously scan BLE tags or smartphones to anonymously identify individuals who may have been in close contact with an infected person. This approach was widely used during COVID-19 pandemic. |
Medical facility management | Medical smart devices, such as fall detection systems with BLE tags and motion sensors, are valuable in settings like nursing homes. Upon detecting a fall, these tags use location based services to pinpoint the person in danger and automatically send alerts to nurses. |
Asset tracking | BLE tags are not limited to tracking people in need. This technology can be used in different industrial scenarios, such as cargo tracking or inventory maintainance. |
Smart home systems utilize BLE technology to enhance comfort levels (image by Mostafizur Rahaman)
Just like any other technology in today’s vast tech world, there will always be competitors. A competitive factor not only opens up a wider set of options to choose from but also lets the technologies prosper and evolve more among the analogues.
Competitive technologies:
Let’s recap the given information 👇
In this section, we’d like to talk about the main technical characteristics of Bluetooth Low Energy. From its architecture to the limits of device connectivity, we'll illustrate what makes BLE a versatile and widely adopted wireless communication technology.
Frequency spectrum | 2.4 GHz |
Minimal time to send data | 6 ms |
Maximum radio data rate | 2 Mbps (Bluetooth 5) |
Connection range | Depends on environmental conditions, selected range mode, and used features. The regular range is 10-30 meters, however, under ideal conditions Bluetooth version 5 LE products may connect through about 400 meters |
Security and encryption | In CCM mode - 128-bit AES |
Peak current consumption | less than 15 mA |
Latency (non-connected -> connected state) | 6 ms |
As stated by Oleksii, the BLE architecture is the network and organization of components within the BLE protocol stack or protocol suite. It consists of three main layers.
The application layer. It serves as the direct interface with the user and encompasses the application logic, user interface, and overall application architecture.
The host layer. It includes multiple protocols and profiles:
Using BLE technology, smart toothbrushes allow users to track recent brushing activity (image by Sam Pietrzak)
Yes, Bluetooth Low Energy versions are backward compatible with each other. However, the features that were released in the newest versions won’t be supported by the older ones.
As an example, a BLE device with a Bluetooth 4.1 can easily be connected to a BLE device with Bluetooth 5.0, yet without access to the newest features of the 5-th version.
Before the release of the Bluetooth 5.2 update, Bluetooth LE devices didn’t support audio devices. With the use of custom implementations, there was a way to make audio streaming possible, however, it was never about achieving a good quality sound. After Bluetooth 5.2, audio transmitting finally became possible with many upgrades and specifications awaiting in the future.
Bluetooth Low Energy is a technology for maintaining faster connections with low power consumption. It's quite typical for a BLE device to operate for a year on a single battery, which showcases how IoT helps in manufacturing by reducing energy consumption and extending device lifecycles. Still, there’re various sources to power such products, underscoring the need for developers to understand how to build companion apps with high power efficiency, especially when developing a health and fitness app that relies on real-time data from BLE sensors. The most common power sources for BLE’s battery life are:
Which makes it crucial to understand how to build battery management software to maximize performance.
Considering that Bluetooth Low Energy radios in fact are Radio Frequency (RF) transceivers — the needed certifications depend on the country where the device is going to be used. Besides the certifications, it’s also required to get an End Product Listing with the Bluetooth SIG, which is a critical step in the Bluetooth Low Energy development process. Some examples:
Communicating and managing Bluetooth Low Energy products, such as those utilized in IoT in smart farming, is often maintained via a specialized app for iPhones or Android devices. Thus, an app is the most common way for managing BLE connection requests, and a BLE app development company can ensure a seamless connection experience, however, connecting devices directly is also practically possible. For example, Web BLE implementation allows for direct interactions with BLE devices through web browsers. We at Stormotion experienced the development of a heart-rate sensor with a direct connection to an exercise machine.
Bluetooth Low Energy protocol is based on a Master (Central) and Slave topology, a Master can create a connection with multiple peripherals simultaneously as well as be the Slave and the Master at the same time. The peripheral device transmits timed advertising packets, while the central device scans for and utilizes these data to locate the peripheral device. A practical limit for the Central device — is supporting up to 20 peripherals connected.
An example of how a BLE device is connected to IoT applications (image by Adam Kalin)
However, the practical number stated before only shows the BLE capabilities in general, but this limit may be different for some cases. It depends on the application-specific aspects that define the number of simultaneous connections in particular cases. Such aspects are primarily:
Experimentally it was determined that a Samsung Galaxy S9 as a BLE Central can support up to 8 simultaneously connected devices. While the iPhone 8, for example, managed to connect up to 10 such products.
According to Microsoft Q&A, when it comes to connecting Bluetooth Low Energy to Windows it works as follows:
Let’s summarize the technical facts about BLE 👇
In this section, we'll explore Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology and its application in beacon systems like iBeacons. We'll cover what BLE beacons and iBeacons are, how they work, and their differences. You'll also learn about their practical uses and the security measures in place.
Bluetooth beacons are a type of Bluetooth Low Energy device that’s presented as a wireless hardware transmitter. The main point of such beacons is to broadcast their identifier to various smartphone-like nearby devices within a close range to take control of them and perform actions like launching an app, opening an information page, or sending a notification.
An appearance of beacons presented by Estimote (image by Estimote)
iBeacon is an Apple protocol based on BLE proximity sensing that possesses a set of features similar to a Bluetooth LE protocol stack.
Practically, to send information about the distance between connected products to a device, iOS delivers the actual calculated distance, while Bluetooth Low Energy relies on the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator). Thus, in an iOS case, the estimated distance won’t depend on the device manufacturers and will be equal regardless of the device version.
The “inner world” of the beacons presented by Estimote (image by Estimote)
Let’s introduce ourselves to a Beacon world step-by-step:
Two popular types of Beacon attacks can affect your mobile product:
Oleksii explains that the effective solution against these attacks relies on replacing the real Beacon ID with a temporary replacement called Secure UUID. The exchange happens periodically through an algorithm known only by the Beacon and the server.
Even if the attacker captures a temporary identifier, it can't be used because it’ll expire soon. The algorithm shouldn't be stored in the mobile application because it can be reverse-engineered. This means the mobile application has to communicate with the server to exchange the temporary identifier for a real one.
This solution requires a constant internet connection. In other words, even if your mobile app caches content for offline usage, Beacon-related features will still require internet connectivity. You can make the exchange period longer or allow the application to cache several future identifiers, but these attempts to support offline capabilities come with lower security.
Beacons are quite useful things that can serve as an informational source or even attract potential customers. Here are some examples of how beacons are used in the modern world:
Notifications created by beacons’ continuous signal transmissions (image by 300Mind UI/UX)
What do we know about Beacons and iBeacons? 👇
We at Stormotion, as an IoT app development company, have already worked on BLE projects from different industries and fields: fitness, transportation, equipment management and others. We help startups and businesses develop mobile & web apps to manage smart BLE devices from fitness trackers to engines, always with a keen eye on optimizing the IoT app development cost.
Also, we create M2M systems where one device is directly connected to another — for example, when you need to connect a heart rate sensor directly to an exercise machine.
Fitness is one of the industries where BLE devices are used the most. Thus, we’d like to highlight our two relevant cases in this section — PlatoonFit and SportPlus. Both of them required connecting different exercise equipment, sensors and monitors.
Platoon Fit is a platform where any user may find various progressive exercises for managing indoor workouts. Along with providing exercise guides, the company pays special attention to video content.
Talking about Bluetooth Low Energy device, our task was to build an MVP that would support fitness tracking devices integration. More specifically, we needed to set up a convenient data transfer between connected heart rate sensors with the Platoon Fit application.
Platoon Fit focuses on health monitoring gadgets as a special part of online workouts (shot by Stormotion)
With the integration of BLE compatibility protocols to the project, we managed to achieve the high-level data transaction system only in 4 weeks of testing and prototyping.
SportPlus is another great specimen on Stormotion’s project showcase. The company produces and sells various unique sports equipment for making their customers’ fitness experience effective. Our task was to design an application that would support every type of exercise machinery they offer.
However, the solution for this case was a challenging one to develop. The challenge lies in the fact that nearly every sports machine the company offers necessitates the use of distinct protocols for exchanged data, which leads us to the main problem. To build a proper communication between an application and the equipment we need to take every possible protocol into account.
With the strategy we created, we managed to access the data flow between another functioning app and the specific machine they offer. Thanks to this decision, we determined the order and format required for sending and receiving different bytes of information in each particular case. After the experimental part, we succeeded in supporting every possible connection for a complete data collection and data exchange system, regardless of the required machinery protocol.
As the topic of BLE products is getting more relevant throughout the years, with the rise of interest there also rises the urge to answer all the frequently asked questions regarding the technology again and again. We at Stormotion tried our best to provide answers to the most common questions in terms of Bluetooth Low Energy and products supported by this technology.
If you have any questions or need any help with integrating Bluetooth Low Energy into your project, let us know. We will be happy to help you meet your business needs with a stunning BLE product!
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