bluetooth-serial-port

Bluetooth serial port communication for Node.js

This node module lets you communicate over Bluetooth serial port with devices using Node.js. The goal is have an easy to use API. This module is great for communicating with Bluetooth enabled Arduino devices.

If you have any problems make sure to checkout the FAQ.

New in this release

• Fixes compilation problem on Windows
• Adds experimental RFCOMM server socket (Linux only)

Pre-requests on Linux

• Needs Bluetooth development packages to build

apt-get install build-essential libbluetooth-dev

Pre-request on OS X

• Needs XCode and XCode command line tools installed.

Pre-request on Windows

• Needs Visual Studio (Visual C++) and its command line tools installed.
• Needs Python 2.x installed and accessible from the command line path.

Install

npm install bluetooth-serial-port

Test build Linux using docker

docker build -t bluetooth-serial-port .

Documentation

Basic client usage

var btSerial = new (require('bluetooth-serial-port')).BluetoothSerialPort();

btSerial.on('found', function(address, name) {
	btSerial.findSerialPortChannel(address, function(channel) {
		btSerial.connect(address, channel, function() {
			console.log('connected');

			btSerial.write(new Buffer('my data', 'utf-8'), function(err, bytesWritten) {
				if (err) console.log(err);
			});

			btSerial.on('data', function(buffer) {
				console.log(buffer.toString('utf-8'));
			});
		}, function () {
			console.log('cannot connect');
		});

		// close the connection when you're ready
		btSerial.close();
	}, function() {
		console.log('found nothing');
	});
});

btSerial.inquire();

Basic server usage

var server = new(require('bluetooth-serial-port')).BluetoothSerialPortServer();

var PORT = 1;
var UUID = '38e851bc-7144-44b4-9cd8-80549c6f2912';

server.listen(UUID, PORT, function (clientAddress) {
    console.log('Client: ' + clientAddress + ' connected!');
    server.on('data' function(buffer) {
        console.log('Received data from client: ' + buffer);

        // ...

        console.log('Sending data to the client');
        server.write(new Buffer('...'), function (err, bytesWritten) {
            if (error) {
                console.log('Error!');
            } else {
                console.log('Send ' + bytesWritten + ' to the client!');
            }
        });
    });
});

server.advertise(UUID, function(err) {
    if (err) {
        console.log('Cannot advertise the server');
    }
});

API

BluetoothSerialPort

Event: ('data', buffer)

Emitted when data is read from the serial port connection.

• buffer - the data that was read into a Buffer object.

Event: ('closed')

Emitted when a connection was closed either by the user (i.e. calling close or remotely).

Event: ('failure', err)

Emitted when reading from the serial port connection results in an error. The connection is closed.

• err - an Error object describing the failure.

Event: ('found', address, name)

Emitted when a bluetooth device was found.

• address - the address of the device
• name - the name of the device (or the address if the name is unavailable)

Event: ('finished')

Emitted when the device inquiry execution did finish.

BluetoothSerialPort.inquire()

Starts searching for bluetooth devices. When a device is found a 'found' event will be emitted.

BluetoothSerialPort.findSerialPortChannel(address, callback[, errorCallback])

Checks if a device has a serial port service running and if it is found it passes the channel id to use for the RFCOMM connection.

• callback(channel) - called when finished looking for a serial port on the device.

• errorCallback - called the search finished but no serial port channel was found on the device. Connects to a remote bluetooth device.

• bluetoothAddress - the address of the remote Bluetooth device.

• channel - the channel to connect to.

• [successCallback] - called when a connection has been established.

• [errorCallback(err)] - called when the connection attempt results in an error. The parameter is an Error object.

BluetoothSerialPort.close()

Closes the connection.

BluetoothSerialPort.isOpen()

Check whether the connection is open or not.

BluetoothSerialPort.write(buffer, callback)

Writes a Buffer to the serial port connection.

• buffer - the Buffer to be written.
• callback(err, bytesWritten) - is called when the write action has been completed. When the err parameter is set an error has occured, in that case err is an Error object. When err is not set the write action was successful and bytesWritten contains the amount of bytes that is written to the connection.

BluetoothSerialPort.listPairedDevices(callback)

ONLY ON OSX

Lists the devices that are currently paired with the host.

• callback(pairedDevices) - is called when the paired devices object has been populated. See the pull request for more information on the pairedDevices object.

BluetoothSerialPortServer

BluetoothSerialPortServer.listen(uuid, channel, callback[, errorCallback])

Listens for an incoming bluetooth connection. It will automatically advertise the server via SDP

• uuid - the UUID of the server
• channel - the RFCOMM channel the server is listening on, in the range of 1-30.
• callback(address) - is called when a new client is connecting.
• errorCallback(err) - is called when an error occurs.

BluetoothSerialPortServer.write(buffer, callback)

Writes data from a buffer to a connection.

• buffer - the buffer to send over the connection.
• callback(err, len) - called when the data is send or an error did occur. error contains the error is appropriated. len has the number of bytes that were written to the connection.

BluetoothSerialPortServer.close()

Stops the server

BluetoothSerialPortServer.isOpen()

Checks is a server is listening or not.

Event: ('data', buffer)

Emitted when data is read from the serial port connection.

• buffer - the data that was read into a Buffer object.

Event: ('closed')

Emitted when a connection was closed either by the user (i.e. calling close or remotely).

Event: ('failure', err)

Emitted when reading from the serial port connection results in an error. The connection is closed.

• err - an Error object describing the failure.

LICENSE

This module is available under a FreeBSD license, see the LICENSE file for details.