Learning about low-energy Bluetooth
With our understanding of what it takes to use Classic Bluetooth, we can build on that to understand the newer version, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), also known as Smart Bluetooth. Here are the differences:
- BLE works well with low-powered devices.
- BLE runs on Macs and Android devices like its classic predecessor, but also on iOS devices; for Windows, you need Windows 10 or newer.
- BLE publishes discoverable services, just like Classic Bluetooth, but there is no need for pairing—clients simply connect and start using a service.
- BLE's published services are defined with a profile, rather than just the raw stream of bytes that you get with Classic Bluetooth. A widely used profile is the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT).
- BLE is primarily used for information reporting from IoT devices such as heart rate or blood pressure monitors, or cycle speed and cadence measuring, but is not limited to one-way communication. ...