Windows 7 and bluetooth 4.0 Smart - windows-7

I am looking to implement the use of a Bluetooth 4.0 Smart Ready device (Polar H6/H7 Heart Rate Sensors) in my application. I am forced to target Windows 7 OS. However, I'm only seeing Windows 8 support for Smart Ready devices. I will not be able to upgrade clients to windows 8 in order to use these devices.
The first problem I found is that Windows 7 does not even see the device in order to pair with it. This might be the dongle I'm using. I have tried 2 different ones. The first is a CSR V4.0 (I'm not sure the actual model number). The second is StarTech USBBT1EDR4. Both seem to be using a CSR chipsets. Maybe I should try a different chipset based dongle? Such as Broadcom or TI?
I do see and can pair with the device with my Windows 8.1 Surface Pro.
Is there no way to get Bluetooth Smart implementation for Windows 7 OS platform?

I've recently faced the same problems! I need to run an application in o older version of windows (win xp) and I cannot find any support to that with my dongle (one based in broadcom bcm20702).
What I've found is that windows prior to windows 8, has no bluetooth low energy support, so you would not be able to use the windows bluetoth stack, and broadcom doesn't have a sdk for BLE (I've contacted them, and they said it).
So I've looked for other alternatives and BlueGiga bluetooth 4.0 dongle has a C SDK that you can use to develop your applications in Windows XP and 7. In that page (after register) you can find all the documentation you need.
I've also found a C# Wrapper and a Java Wrapper to its API.
Hope it can help.
[EDIT] : just received my dongle, tried it with win XP and it worked. Guess this is a solution for you also!

Strange thing is, I installed windows 10 and I could use bluetooth smart from my Logitech MX master mouse, but I had to go back to windows 7 because of display drivers and now it does not support it anymore. Windows 7 does not support smart bluetooth. It's just a driver I would presume, but Logitech does not provide it.
I find it realy strange that the old bluetooth device in my laptop worked fine with bluetooth smart devices in Windows 10 but in windows 7 it can only connect to plain old bluetooth devices.

Related

Accessing Onboard I2C-Controller from Windows10 Professional

we want to use a single board computer (C582S-IM-AA), which has an I2C Controller, because we have some I2C slave ICs which, drive some LEDs and inputs and outputs.
The OS should be Windows10 Professional, because we have an application that runs on it.
So my question is: can I access the C582S-IM-AA's onboard I2C-Controller from Windows Pro version.
All Examples and articles, I found, use Windows IoT and I'm not shure what's the difference. (When I look into my laptops W10 Pro Device-Manager, I can see some I2C Host Controllers under System Devices, but how to use them?)
Until now we used a Mainboard from Congatec, and they supplied a C and C# library to access the onboard I2C-Bus from Windows10 Pro, which worked like a charm.
So maybe someone has experiences with I2C on Windows10 Pro (Libs, Native APIs, ). Or maybe my idea is totally stupid? Or maybe all functionality of Win Pro is also availlable in Win IoT, so that we can switch to it?
Thank you.

Is it possible to share USB port hooked by libusb-win32 among several applications?

To make my program could communicate with Nokia phone I have setup libusb-win32 library. But after I have this library installed any standard Nokia soft like PC Suite refuses not only to communicate but even to detect my phone! The phone is still available only to my program through libusb-win32 now. Removal of the libusb0.sys driver helps and phone becomes again accessible through Nokia PC Suite, but then it is no more visible to my app via libusb-win32 library. Whether it is somehow possible to get the phone accessible as through libusb-win32 for my application as for standard Nokia phone programs (Nokia PC Suite, NSU, NSS, etc.)?
I run Windows 7 Enterprise and libusb-win32 1.2.6.0
Answer to myself. Yes, it is possible. The driver libusb-win32 should be installed in the filter drive option, not in the device file option.

iBeacon BLE Bluetooth 4.0 Windows 7

How can I create an iBeacon on a windows 7 PC with Smart Bluetooth 4.0 integrated with the Wi-Fi, I.e not a separate dongle. I'd rather not look at other OS's as the device also has to run an Adobe air application at the same time.
Thanks
Mike
Sorry, but you cannot natively make a Bluetooth LE-equipped Windows 7/8/8.1 computer broadcast as an iBeacon. The operating system is limited in its BLE support to allowing third party apps to work with a limited number of BLE profiles. More details are available here in this question about Windows phone, but the info also applies to the desktop Windows OS:
iBeacon support for Windows Phone devices. Support is expected to be added in Windows 10 in late 2015.
Until then, your options are limited to a Linux VM or to a hardware dongle with native iBeacon support.
As David pointed out, there is no API available for working with iBeacons until Windows 10.
If you don't need any other Bluetooth connectivity, you can replace the Bluetooth driver with a libusb driver and use your own Bluetooth stack which adds support for iBeacon. You can check out open-source libraries like BlueZ and btstack and make the HCI layer work. On top of that you can implement/port the BLE advertisement and discovery HCI commands and you have all you need for working with iBeacons.

Force bluetooth legacy pairing in Windows 7

I recently acquired a Bluetooth headset (Philips SHB9100) for my smartphone, but also wanted to use it with my Windows 7 PC, so I bought a cheap USB Bluetooth adapter without noticing it was a v2.0 adapter, while the headset is v2.1 + EDR.
The USB Adapter installed correctly on Windows 7, and I am able to discover my headset, but when they try to pair, an ugly Error 0x80004005 appears, never asking me for a PIN.
After some googling, and founding many people had this pairing problem, I read that the major improvement in Bluetooth v2.1 is SSP, which permits pairing without the need to enter a PIN, and also that Windows 7 chooses the "best pairing mechanism" automatically. And so I started to suspect that this is what's happening:
Windows discovers a SSP capable device.
Windows tries to pair with that device using SSP.
The USB Adapter, being v2.0, is unable to permit pairing with the headset via SSP.
Windows does it's best showing a 0x80004005 error.
I searched for a v2.1 or superior USB Bluetooth Adapter in my city but couldn't find any (I'm from La Plata, Argentina) and even though I think I'll end buying one, I'd like to make this work, or at least know for sure why the devices aren't pairing.
And so my question is (and I swear I did some more googling before asking here):
Can I force Windows to try a legacy pairing with my headset?
Any info on the subject is welcome.
Thanks!
I recently faced a similar issue and after a lot of trial and error together with research, I finally fint a compatible driver. I downloaded a few drivers from the intel site and tried it with each one of them. Finally I was able to fix my issues with the driver below.
https://communities.intel.com/thread/103579
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26191
This link can also help with the issue, worth sharing.
https://superuser.com/questions/471767/bluetooth-headset-pairs-and-appears-in-sound-devices-but-shows-as-disconnected

Is there anyway for me to create windows 8 apps(for PC and Mobile devices) on mac

I use Mac OSX. I now want to try and develop an app on windows 8 for the Imagine Cup.
But i dont want to switch back to windows.
Is there any way to develop apps for windows 8 from mac?
Preferably free option....
The only available way is to use Virtual Machine because one cannot develop Windows 8 Modern UI app(Windows Store app) even with lower version of windows than windows 8. There are many virtual machines are available for free. Virtualbox maybe a good start.
www.techspot.com/guides/503-windows-8-virtual-machine ,A Tutorial to create vm of windows 8.
Assuming that windows phone is the platform you chose to develop app, again you need windows to create windows phone app.
Kick start your windows phone app development here .
I actually use VMWare on a Mac to do all of my Win32 development on Windows 7 and VS2010.
You will need:
a powerful mac (i7)
lots of RAM (I have 8G, I wish I had 16G)
a 7200rpm HDD or SSD.
With that, it's really great for me. I've been doing this for a few months now without a single kernel panic or blue screen at all.
Note: You cannot really develop for WP7 using this sort of configuration. The WP7 simulator uses VirtualBox, which either runs extremely slowly or not at all in other VMs, based on our experience. Will need a real Windows machine for that ^_^
It's a workable scenario. Good luck!

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