To communicate with multiple BLE devices using Windows 10 UWMP

Question

I'm running Windows 10 IoT on Raspberry pi 3 and I have like 10 Arduino based BLE devices with which I need to communicate with.

I need my program to iterate through all the 10 BLE devices, send a command and receive a response.

I have done it on Android, but I'm don't know how to do it on Windows 10. Any help would be great.

Thank you

Answer 1

Not fully sure if you are wanting to plug 10 Arduinos into a Raspberry Pi, or if you want to communicate to 10 BLE enabled Arduino wirelessly. If it's the latter, I can help. I'm assuming you have an understanding BLE fundamentals.

Overview: Basically you'll want to pair the Bluetooth Arduinos with Win IoT, connect to each one of them, send and receive data using GATT Characteristics, then disconnect when finished.

1. Get an HCI BLE dongle to form the list of supported BLE dongles for Win IoT.
2. You must then pair each BLE Arduino to Win IoT. This will allow the Pi to find the devices through your code.
3. To send data and receive responses form the wireless BLE devices, a connection must first be established.
4. I assume you'll have already programmed the Arduino to have a Characteristic (possibly named "command"), in their GATT database with write access and another (possibly named "response") with read access and notifications enabled. Characteristics are like sockets. Make sure your Arduinos have something similar to this setup.
5. In your Win IoT code, you'll have to discover these GATT Characteristics while connected to the Arduino. After discovery, data can be written to the "command" Characteristic.
6. Arduino can then respond by triggering the notification that data is waiting on the "response" characteristic. After the Pi has received this notification, it should then proceed to read the "response" Characteristic from the Arduino's GATT database.
7. Finally, disconnect when finished and repeat on the next Arduino.