Hello,

New to the forums - be kind! I'm a seasoned software developer, but new to the BB.

I have a client who wants to enable their salesforce to gather field data from the device they are selling. The device only has RS-232.

I've proposed a solution to use a BT/RS232 Dongle (BlueSnap-XP) on the device side and simply connect to it from the BB using the SPP.

My needs are simple, I need to send and receive serial data to the device. I'm guessing I'm not the first person in the world to need to do this.

What have others done? Are there any serial terminal software packages available for the BB to do this? I don't want to re-invent the wheel here.

Thanks!

pivoberry

I'm a geek, but a n00b as a devloper (done it for decades, but only a project here & there). I believe that serial Bluetooth profile is what you're looking for and I'm not entirely sure, but that may turn out to mean you need BT2. Many older handsets get upgraded to BT2 when the 4.5 O/S comes out.

Thanks for the reply. I'm a little confused. I didn't think the SPP (Serial Port Profile) was limited to BT2? Is that the case? Is this a BlackBerry thing only?

Can anyone verify?

Thanks,

pivoberry

I'm not sure if BT2 is a requirement to get SPP, but I believe it is to allow multiple connections & I'm anticipating your field guys won't necessarily know how to disconnect a headset to let other services run.

But I could be wrong - headsets do coexist with BT GPS pucks, for example.

On the software side, I'm just not sure if anybody has tried raw data acquisition - and if they have, your success may also depend on the length of the stream and the degree of buffering (or tolerance for selective resends) as the handset CPU must also deal with other tasks while it's listening for data.

I think you can find some vendors out there with drivers for BT bar scanners, for example, who might be able to point you in the right direction.