When I first joined the Bluetooth SIG, although I was a wireless developer, I wasn’t familiar with the ins and outs of Bluetooth® technology. I immersed myself by trying to read over 3,000 pages of specification guidelines (still not finished) to learn the development process for both adopted and custom profiles—and what tools were available—with the ultimate goal of understanding how to implement the technology. The bottom line was it took me a long time to figure it out (this may, of course, be saying something about my intellectual prowess – or lack thereof, but I digress). As a developer trying to understand Bluetooth technology, and the terminology, and how to get it onto a Bluetooth chip or module, and, and and…it seemed really hard to get your arms around. I decided there must be a better way.
And I wasn’t the only one. I talked to partners who wished there was a better, more uniform way to create custom services. I talked to developers who wished there was some type of easy-to-use code generation that would help them stub out the code for the Bluetooth modules. I talked to module makers who wanted an easy way to distribute reference designs to developers. All of these ideas became the impetus for the Bluetooth Developer Studio.
Bluetooth Developer Studio Dashboard
There are three core tenets:
Lower the barrier to entry—developers need easy access to core components, while reducing technical distractions to be about to reduce the learning curve. Bluetooth has lots of great documentation but as the technology advances, it gets harder for developers to keep up with the changes, even in just the GATT layer. The concept of creating custom profiles (use cases for how a device functions in a solution) added an extra layer of complexity. We had to find a way of doing this without creating a massive document.
Speed time-to-market—reducing the documentation and making the process more intuitive would certainly speed up the process. However, we wanted to go further. There are a lot of great tools in existence for creating device-side (and client-side) code, including compilers and IDEs. We didn’t want to create a whole new tool chain. The tool needed to be easy to use, but also flexible enough to allow for integration into other tool chains to avoid duplication and ensure the process is as quick as possible.
Increase consistency and collaboration—I’m constantly astounded by the amount of good ideas from the community. Hobbyists, makers, all the way through to large ODMs are using Bluetooth to create the latest and greatest connected devices and applications. We wanted a way for people to be able to share their innovations in a simple way that would benefit the community as a whole.
Bluetooth Developer Studio addresses all three of these issues by providing a graphical working space to use existing, adopted specifications, or you can create your own custom services to suit the needs of your particular product. It also has a flexible plugin layer (think of this as the SDK for the Bluetooth Developer Studio) that allows OEMs, module makers, chip providers, or anyone who wants to extend Developer Studio programmatically get the information stored within Developer Studio into another toolset. And finally the online repository allows developers to share their custom services with others, and gives hardware creators a venue to publish reference designs to the community.
Publish a Package in Developer Studio
It would be misleading to say this is the end because it’s not. The tool will evolve over time and add even more value to your Bluetooth development efforts. But we need your help! Use the tool, send us feedback, and help make Bluetooth Developer Studio the best tool it can be!
I hope you enjoy version 1.0,
Steve
