How to Connect to Arduino Using Bluetooth || iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac Connectivity

hello and welcome back to Lemaster Tech in today's video I'm going to show you how to connect to an Arduino via Bluetooth for iPhones Androids and computers [Music] so this tutorial is going to cover how to add a Bluetooth module to an Arduino board that does not have intrinsic connectivity built in there are options of Arduino boards that come with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and I can link some of those below as well but I'm going to assume you already have an Arduino board and now want to add a Bluetooth connection module to it the good news is this is pretty easy and pretty cheap so if you want to control your board with an Android device or a Windows laptop the cheapest option that I have used is the hc06 Bluetooth module but if you're looking to connect your Arduino board via iPhone the hc6 is not compatible the most affordable module I've found that can do that is the DSD Tech hm10 module which has an app on the iOS store that you use to connect your board now both these modules are a four pin Bluetooth send and receive module with a TX pin RX pin voltage and ground pin the physical hookup of either module is exactly the same and it's extremely simple for this video I have the TX and RX pins connected to digital pins three and four of the Arduino and then the voltage and ground pins connected to the power supply from the Arduino the only other thing I've done for this demo is two LEDs connected to digital pins nine and ten and then fed through two 220 kilo ohm resistors back to ground the reason to not use the built-in TX and RX pins on the Arduino is that for Bluetooth communication which is really acting as another form of Serial communication we would not be able to connect to our Arduino IDE via the serial cable to the board and be connected to the Bluetooth module at the same time if we use those pins we would need to unplug the Bluetooth module to connect via serial cable and vice versa but if we use what Arduino calls a software serial Port using a different pair of digital pins as we're doing in this example you can both connect to the board via serial cable and the Bluetooth module via Bluetooth at the same time the sketch for this this example which will be linked below via GitHub as well starts by including the software serial Library which is necessary to repurpose a pair of digital pins as a new serial Communications path then create an instance of the software serial object I just called mine BT for Bluetooth and then Define the TX and RX pins in that order TX first mine is pin 3 and RX second minus pin 4. then just Define a character to store the value we want to send over Bluetooth and Define my LED pins as 9 and 10. in the setup function we're just going to Define our LED pins as outputs and do bt.begin9600 which is defining the baud rate or data transfer rate as 9 600 bits per second the loop section of the code just checks to see if any new data is available from the Bluetooth source and if it is we display the value in the serial Communications window and if the sent value is a one I'll turn on the green light and off the red light and if any other value is sent we'll flip those light statuses then lastly just put a delay of 100 milliseconds or so in there so the program has some time to breathe and we're ready to test this upload the sketch to the board and with the board powered up and the Bluetooth module not yet connected to anything you should have a blinking red light on either of these modules for Windows connectivity I found you have to change the Bluetooth device's discovery option to an advanced and away from default for these modules to show up but then you can choose connect to a device add device and select Bluetooths and either device should show up here you can verify connection after selecting the device by going to device manager and under ports you should see standard serial over Bluetooth Link com ports now displayed I don't have a Mac so I apologize if the steps are slightly different for Mac users hopefully it's very close now go back to the Arduino IDE go to tools then ports and select the com Port that is the same as the one you just viewed from the device manager select it and tell your IDE what device it is then open the serial Monitor and it should say connecting to your device on your com port and then it should connect and be waiting to receive your commands and the communication light on the Bluetooth module should go solid red at that point for iPhone users you need to get the DSD Tech bluetooth app from the IOS app store which takes like three seconds to install I believe the app is named the same thing for Android users and with your module powered up you should see it as available right on the front screen of the app once you allow it to communicate via Bluetooth click on it and once you get a check mark you're connected click on that device again and you enter the communication screen where you can now send commands now try sending a one to the board from either your serial monitor screen on the Arduino IDE or from the app on your phone and you should see the green light turn on and sending any other number or letter will turn the red light on okay so that is the basics of setting up Bluetooth connection between an Arduino and either your phone or your computer there are so many things that you can't possibly cover in one video around Communications but drop any questions or issues you're having or comments in the comments below this video and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible if you'd like to see a continuation on this video where we build out some basic apps using like MIT App Inventor or computer-based app just let me know that in the comments below as well and I can get working on that content too thanks so much for watching you can find all the hardware needed for this project in the description of this video below as well as a link to my patreon if you'd like to become a super supporter of the channel thank you so much to my patreon subscribers Dale topley and Philip Nunes you guys are awesome thank you so much everyone who leaves nice comments likes on the videos subscribes to the channel the growth has been outstanding thanks for watching good luck with your projects see you next time bye