Bluetooth receiver as an on/off switch

androidbluetoothbluetooth low energyled

Is it possibly to use a Bluetooth receiver as an on/off switch in a circuit board?

Ideally, I would set the Bluetooth receiver into a low energy/sleep mode and use it simply as an on/off switch on a device. There is a small battery connected to the circuit board and an LED light at the other end, just to test if this will work.

Ideally it works like so:

Android/iPhone sends signal to Bluetooth receiver
Bluetooth receiver accepts the signal, then the LED light turns on/off
I know many people use bluetooth devices to maintain a constant connection with their phone and/or constantly feed information, however this isn't my intention.

I simply want to use it as an on/off switch that my phone can communicate with at all times.

Best Answer

You are looking for Bluetooth 4.0 I think. Lower BT versions are not made for energy efficient systems. Notice you probably want to stay connected to the BT device because:

  • Polling/inquiring is were BT normally wastes more power.
  • You may want to have "real time" response (you don't want to wait until the BT devices are synchronized). Going from standby to connected status may take from more than half a second (known address) to several seconds (unknown address) which is definitively a non real time response.

There are also low power modes for the BT (park, hold and sniff), which you can use to quickly change to the active (connected) status for data transmission.

Sorry for the mixed up ideas in the response, it is better if you read a little bit about BT versions and architecture if you are interested. Otherwise my advise is, again, go for BT version 4.

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