_________________
IF IT BLEEDS WE CAN KILL IT ,THIS STUFF WILL MAKE YOU A GODDAM SEXUAL TYRANASURUS ,YOUVE BEEN PUSHING TOO MANY PENCILS DILLON .GET TO THE CHOPPER

Been having a play tonight. I was wondering if there were alternatives to the SparkFun BlueSMiRF Gold and BlueSMiRF Silver modules.

I found a few on EBay which all use the same daughterboard and settled on this one...


...purely because it had the header pins straight to solder onto a bit of stripboard.

After trying the module in a bit of breadboard, I got a bit of stripboard and a 3.3V regulator and cobbled this together...



Works a treat and is about a quarter of the price of the Sparkfun.

As an aside, there are plenty of resources for these boards as they are used for robots and model helicopters etc., and there is lots of info on configuring them, however I could not communicate with it to configure it... No need to worry though as it works straight out of the Chinese jiffy bag, being set to 9600 baud, no parity bit and no flow control...

_________________
08 Specialized Langster

TANSTAAFL

Needs only two clicks to find a full AT command set for a sparkfun module, but the descriptions how to make this part talk to the PC to change the baud rate seemed larger than the setup guide I had to write for the ecmspy site. IMO too complicated if another baud rate than 9600 baud is required (the factory race and EBR ECMs need 19200 baud).

_________________
"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living."
Terry Pratchett

A bit more playing and I am sure I will conquer it

_________________
08 Specialized Langster

I'm sure you will but as these modems can't be configured using Bluetooth (I found no hint they can), but via cable only, you have to connect it to a FDTI cable, then need to find a power supply and ... and ...
Seems to be a nice cheap solution as long as everything is working as desired, but I would not dare to provide user support for that. Sounds like a nice time killer to me.

_________________
"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living."
Terry Pratchett

Is there a chance you have a pic of the underside before adding the deutsch connector or a sketch of how its wired?

The ECMSpy site has some good pics.

Which board do you want to see, SparkFun or ChineseCheapy?

_________________
08 Specialized Langster

I picked up this one
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Arduino-Wireles ... 3cc2f1f92b

That looks the same as my budget one. The budget one didn't last more than a few weeks, whereas the Sparkfun one has been permanently connected to the Uly for about 8 months and still works great...

_________________
08 Specialized Langster

+1

Same expirence.

This forum is great for info. I built a Bluetooth dongle over the weekend but forgot how to set it up. A quick search and here we are (even if I did write it myself).

_________________
08 Specialized Langster

_________________
2001 X1 2009 1125CR 2006 Uly X3 2010 Uly a fully Maz'd S1 and a 1991 RS1200 Westwind.

If you stack the boards on top of each other, these are pretty cool as an enclosure...

_________________
08 Specialized Langster

As an aside I found a Chinesium Bluetooth module as I was clearing stuff out the other day and I thought I would have a play with the resistor fix. Anyway, all went in but I couldn't get it to work with the 78L05 voltage regulator I use with the Sparkfun. After a bit of investigation I found it needed 250mA and the 78L05 was only rated to 100mA and it kept over-temping and shut down.

_________________
08 Specialized Langster