All wired up with no room to move. The solution is Bluetooth, an industry-standard for wireless personal area networks (PANs), enabling automatic, secure, short-range, low-power, low-cost and low-bandwidth radio-based connectivity between a range of personal devices such as mobile phones and laptop PCs. It eliminates the mess of wires, and maintains connectivity while the user and their devices are free to move around the home, office or car.

The project began as an industry project for an automotive manufacturer. Bluetooth is especially convenient in automotive applications, reducing driver distraction and thus maintaining safety standards. No more rummaging through pockets and bags when the phone rings, as the driver can make and receive calls using controls on the centre console and steering wheel. By displaying information such as incoming call, address book and other options on the centre console and instrument cluster displays, driver distraction is minimized. The driver won’t require physical access to the phone, and can still make and receive calls, even if the phone is in a briefcase in the car boot. With support for forming a piconet between one master and up to seven slaves, the mobile phone can maintain a data connection with the centre console unit and an audio connection with the handsfree car kit.

This project describes the development of a Bluetooth Windows application using the Bluetooth network protocol stack built into Microsoft Windows XP. Windows Bluetooth functionality is programmed through specific Bluetooth extensions used with Windows Sockets, the Windows networking specification providing access to various protocols. The application demonstrates sending binary objects such as business cards to a mobile phone over Bluetooth using the OBEX communications protocol, and will describe how to discover Bluetooth devices within range and what services they offer. The project is developed using the Microsoft Visual .NET development environment, and will compare the Win32 and .NET platforms.

Dr Jamie Evans, David Tieu