Hi,
I've been using CT for about a year now, and recently picked up a requirement to use bluetooth communication. I have done some extensive online trawling for a suitable package and information regarding the implementation of bluetooth. Serial comms such as UART, USB and Ethernet protocols are well supported, yet strikingly, I can find very little (if anything) with regard to Bluetooth. I have not only looked at CT, but also Lazarus pages and FPC in general.
Even Lazarus's Hardware page (
wiki.freepascal.org/Hardware_Access) does not mention Bluetooth at all! For such a mature and well established communication protocol, I was really expecting to find a suitable package or at least non graphical library component that takes care of detecting available Bluetooth ports (if any) and negotiating a connection, porting data through to the app etc. The closest I have been able to find is a package called TLazSerial however this is not in CT as standard (or at least it does not appear to be). It also concerns me that at least 1 forum user states it is not compatible with Raspberry Pi, which is an ARM based SBC, and ultimately I do want to use an ARM based tablet for my application (Running a Linux flavour such as Ubuntu), so the TLazSerial package may be a no go.
To clarify, I am more or less completely ignorant when it comes to Bluetooth (apart from end user experience of course), however I am sure that the OS takes care of pairing devices etc. Once paired, the OS must then make the Bluetooth connection available, I think.
As an example, I have been using this resource (albeit for Python programmers) which is quite informative, and everything prior to where they start actually using Python code goes a long way to lay down some ground rules:
people.csail.mit.edu/albert/bluez-intro/
IE although I can find a fair amount of information regarding Bluetooth in general (eg specification) how we actually use it within the context of FPC / Code Typhon is a complete mystery.
Of all the incredible libraries/packages included with CT, is there any support for Bluetooth? If so, where is the documentation?
Thank you for an otherwise very useful IDE and FPC solution. Much appreciated.
Regards,
Graham
