#173 ESP32 Bluetooth BLE with Arduino IDE (Tutorial) and Polar H7

So far, we had to use Espressif’s tools to use Bluetooth on the ESP32. Today I will try it with the Arduino IDE. I am curious how it will work. Maybe you come with me on this discovery tour? For sure, we will learn a lot about how Bluetooth low energy, or BLE, works.

In this video we will cover:
- The basics of Bluetooth Low energy
- The different roles of devices
- How we debug BLE connections using our Smartphone
- We will build a notifier and a client
- We will try to fake a Polar H7 Heart Rate monitor (at least, the BLE part
- If we have time, we will have a look at An iTag Chain finder and a Xiaomi Flower care system
- And maybe we will discover some “secret sauces” necessary for a delicious meal?

Links:

Please do not try to Email me or invite me on LinkedIn. These communication channels are reserved for my main job

[ThomasHaberkorn]

Please continue your BLE effort! Thank you for your support.

[sorin.n]

Hello Andreas,
Congrats for one of the best introductory videos I could find on BLE!
There are ble devices allowing discovery and pairing even if they are already paired. Kind of promiscuous, but that's life! :))

[ryancsumner]

Great intro - I really needed it. I always giggle at the dry humor. I wish I had more secret sauce.

[das]

I think this is a topic worth continuing with and sharing because it is such a strong communication taking any data from esp32 to a mobile which then can do all sorts of things - communicate easily via - txt - sm- email - to -wifi and easy access to screen display and data storage on phone sd card. Phones are so cheap that is really becomes the interface to use.

[knightautomationservices]

Thank you so much for your Efforts! This video was very useful to understand BLE ! Keep making more Video!

[CristiIstrate]

Nice introduction in BLE. I hope you make more on this topic as I am very interested.

[SA-ojbo]

Hi Andreas, nice to see the first video about BLuetooth with ESP. Can I suggest an interesting subject for a future video? The Chinese manufacturers of ESP based products all use "SmartConfig", a clever way to connect in seconds a new ESP with a smartphone and cloud on any WiFi network, without the need to go to the ESP by webinterface or serial. They use some UDP broadcasting by the App if I understand it correctly, that includes the WiFi credentials in the packet. Unfortunately I can not find a lot about it and would like to understand it better, I think it is interesting for all your viewers too....thanks in advance!

[martinrobotz]

Very useful tutorial on BLE, not the usual IoT stuff for internet connected nonsense gadgets. While IoT has no more secrets left, BLE is still a mistery for makers. Because there is no literature on Arduino BLE this video is a valueable knowledge base.

[deangreenhough]

Congratulations on 50k subscribers. Very well deserved and the quality just keeps getting better. You sir are always my number 1 to go to for information first!

Eternally grateful and appreciative of your outstanding work.

Merry Xmas to all the intelligent people that follow your work and of course to our very own Electronics Father Xmas whom delivers a present every Sunday on the dot 🙏

[giaras]

Excellent work as usual Andreas. I had some experience with modules such as HC08, but working with esp32 is a completely different and better world. Thanks a lot

[RainAndy]

Best use for BLE-enabled esp32 would be presence sensor that detects phone. If phone is within the range - HomeAlarm is deactivated, or something like that. Do you think you can implement it?

[africanwizz]

Thanks for the video, it's great that you show the fails as well!

[mispeaced]

Polar uses 4 protocols - GymLink (non-coded), GymLink, Wind, Bluetooth. Your FT60 watch is only compatible with GymLink heart rate devices (T31, H1, H2, H7, H10), it doesn't work over BLE. And H7 sensor provides both GymLink+Bluetooth compatibility. So, H7 works over GymLink with your FT60 watch and over Bluetooth with smartphones/esp32/.


How do I know that? I also owe H7 + FT4 watch (GymLink only) :)

And thanks for another great video!

[seba]

Really, really THANK YOU for your work. Whole work. I learn so much from you.

[sladkii_bubalekh]

Hi, mr. Spiess. I think I know the main reason why your watch did not recognize the ESP32. The main reason could be simple: The data format sent by the ESP32. I've checked the official description of and find the "Heart Rate Value Format bit", which is setting the value type to UINT8 or to UINT16. "Note: The format of the Heart Rate Measurement Value field is dependent upon bit 0 of the Flags field."

[deangreenhough]

Morning Andreas😀

Great work yet again my friend👍👍👍👍

Your amazing 👈

[hansschenker]

Please keep on with BLE! It will have a bright future!

[fiachra]

So it’s possible that polar have what is like a subdomain of Bluetooth mac addresses and the watch won’t connect to any device outside that domain. That’s how we did it with ours. As you learned, without direct disconnection ble will assume it’s still connected the other device has just gone out of range ( I think timeouts are pretty long). While connected it won’t transmit advertising packets and (I think) will refuse other direct connections. The other think to contend with when trying to spoof commercial devices is pairing is different between BLE and BT Classic but depending on how their security is setup there’s usually a handshake that involves key exchanges and the server adding the clients to a trusted device list. All in all BLE is way easier to work with than classic but it does have some really irritating gotchas that are very confusing.

[morpheuz]

waiting for xiaomi band 2 :D.. continue the nice work i learn so much from you

[SeanHodgins]

That was very helpful. I have a quite a few projects that could benefit from more knowledge in BLE technology.