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Bluetooth this week announced a no-cost software-based development kit that helps developers learn Bluetooth technology quickly and bring products to market faster.
The Bluetooth Developer Studio will ensure that building for the Internet of things (IoT) is simple, consistent and fast, while still providing security, reliability, control and convenience. It enables developers to focus on building the products and applications that will give consumers the best experience in their home, on their phones and everywhere else Bluetooth is used.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the general availability of the Bluetooth Developer Studio.
“The Bluetooth Developer Studio arms developers with an all-in-one, cost-efficient, and easy-to-use tool to turn their ideas into reality,” said Steve Hegenderfer, director of developer programs for the Bluetooth SIG, in a statement. “With it, they can create products and applications that make our lives easier, better, smarter. With Bluetooth Developer Studio, not only will we see more smart gadgets enter the market, we will see quality products that ‘just work,’ delivering the IoT experience consumers actually want.”
Companies and developers are looking to add value to their products and services with smart wireless connectivity, and they are turning to Bluetooth to make it happen. The Bluetooth Developer Studio, with its unique sharing features, will ensure that building for IoT is simple, Hegenderfer said.
Bluetooth Developer Studio empowers developers to build—and bring to market—the next smart home appliance, the next life-saving medical wearable or the next innovative children’s toy quickly and inexpensively. Developers—from newcomers to the experienced—can jump-start their projects by focusing on building their product or app versus learning the nuances of the technology.
“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,” Hegenderfer said in a blog post about Bluetooth Developer Studio. “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.”
The Bluetooth Developer Studio’s key benefits and features include an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface, sample codes, virtual and physical device testing, and built-in tutorials for faster deployment. Additionally, the tool makes it easy to share reference designs and leverage successful implementations created by others.
The Bluetooth Developer Studio ran a successful beta program with thousands of participants over seven months. Feedback and tool review during the beta refined the Bluetooth Developer Studio and confirmed demand for a tool that will advance the IoT development process and unleash the potential of wireless connectivity, the Bluetooth SIG said.
“The Bluetooth Developer Studio, amazingly, did most of the work for us and got our developers on the playing field, fast,” said Bill Johnson, marketing manager at Frontline Test Equipment, in a statement. “This is the easiest and most reliable way I have seen to get started working with Bluetooth on new products, and the interactive view of your custom use case in the designer is phenomenal.”
Hegenderfer said the Bluetooth Developer Studio addresses the key issues of IoT development and the development of Bluetooth applications: lowering the barrier to entry, speeding up time-to-market, and increasing consistency and collaboration.
“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,” Hegenderfer said in his post. “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 to 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.”