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.

RELEASE NOTES

1.0.5

• Updates the code example in the README.
• Adds win32 to the supported OS'es in the package.json.

1.0.4

• Added windows support.

1.0.3

• Fixes an issue on Linux where reading from a closed or reset connection would result into a SEGFAULT.

1.0.2

• Updates the documentation.
• Fixes an issue where memory is freed incorrectly after closing a connection on OS X.
• Improves the timeout mechanism that is used for getting the Bluetooth service records on a remote device on OS X.

1.0.1

• No code changes, only updates the documentation.

1.0.0

• Makes the write function asynchrone.
• Takes a Buffer as the input for the write function in favor of a String.
• Reads data into a Buffer object instead of using a String.
• Improves error handling when calling the native addon.

0.2.1

• Fixes issue where calling close on a connection would result in an Abort trap: 6 error on OS X.

0.2.0

• Experimental support for OS X!
• findSerialPortChannel does not invoke callback anymore when no channel was found.
• found event now emits the Bluetooth address as the value of the name parameter name when the name of the device could not be determined (used to be [undefined]).

Pre-requests on Linux

• Needs Bluetooth development packages to build

apt-get install 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 form the command line path.

Install

npm install bluetooth-serial-port

Documentation

Basic 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();		
	});
});

btSerial.inquire();

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: ('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)

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.

BluetoothSerialPort.connect(bluetoothAddress[, successCallback, errorCallback])

Connects to a remote bluetooth device.

• bluetoothAddress - the address of the remote Bluetooth device.
• [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 succesfull and bytesWritten contains the amount of bytes that is written to the connection.

LICENSE

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