Show HN: Open source hardware platform for Bluetooth hacking | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Open source hardware platform for Bluetooth hacking

nordicsemiconductor.github.io

46 pointsaleksanb10 comments

Hello HN! We, a group of summer interns at Nordic Semiconductor, have made an Internet of Things-enabling platform based on ARM's mbed technology. We make it easy to rapidly prototype and develop Bluetooth LE enabled devices - get up and running in under 10 lines of code, written directly in the browser.

We hope to create a community around BLE devices where developers share their ideas designs with each other. Everything is open-source, of course, with lots of supporting materials, together with companion apps for both Android and iOS.

I have spent 10 minutes trying to find an actual working "buy now" or "add to cart" button, but sadly, those are no where to find.

I followed the link from Location Puck Tutorial Page[1] to mbed.org page[2] which does have a "Buy Now" button, but clicking on it took me back to the vendor page where it was completely unclear how am i supposed to buy this!

I understand you have this amazing bluetooth board, that I can do wonderful magic with it. But how do I get one? Give me a straight direct link to buy this thing.

How can you possibly think that this can be called "The Raspberry Pi of Bluetooth" when even buying this looks like an impossible mission.

As I said it looks pretty cool and I congratulate you for taking it so far. I think there is a lot of work to be done to enable hobbyists/hackers to buy this device easily without jumping through numerous corporate hops.

Also if I understand it correctly, I need a special IDE to be able to hack on this device? If that is really the case, I think there should be some work to decouple the device from the IDE to increase the openness and remove any kind of vendor lock-in.

But then again, i might be completely off and this device is not what i thought it was. Good luck anyway!

[1] http://nordicsemiconductor.github.io/puck/tutorials/location...

[2] https://mbed.org/platforms/Nordic-nRF51822/

[3] https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-R-low-ener...

I was curious as well, here's a shop I found with what appear to be the products from the tutorials..

http://www.semiconductorstore.com/Nordic-Semiconductor/

Wow, thanks! That's what I was looking for. Why the article didn't link to the exact product page on this store is really beyond me.

Edit: They added a direct link to the store. Great!

Thanks for the feedback (I'm one of the summer interns that worked on this). We've added "buy now" links that go to http://www.semiconductorstore.com/cart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idprod... .

The IDE is a webapp (!), no downloads required to get hacking. That being said, it is possible to use other tool chains, such as gcc or µVision, but we haven't focused on that in the tutorials.

Great, thanks for adding the direct link to store page.

Cool idea. I would recommend making it clearer how to order the kit though. I read your page with interest, then reached the bottom without really knowing what to do next (yes, I did see that "tutorial" link).

I understand that as interns you may not have control over the purchase process, but a "Buy now ($XX)" button at the bottom would be a step in the right direction.

(for the curious, it appears that an nRF51822 evaluation kit costs about $/€ 80).

Please mark in the title that it's about BLE, not the "usual" Bluetooth. Those are two different technologies.

Neat project. It would be even greater if the IDE was working natively on OSX/Linux.

With mbed you can compile everything from the browser, and Nordic's userspace code can be compiled on any platform with GCC.

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