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BtSerial and BtSerial Pro perform the same function; they use the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile (SPP) to connect to
other Bluetooth devices. After discovering the device, they establish a L2CAP, then RFCOMM connection to it. Once
this is done, data can be sent and received.
BtSerial and BtSerial Pro are very different applications though. This table highlights the differences:
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| BtSerial Pro |
BtSerial |
Has 3 different "discovery" modes:
- Standard Palm UI
- Custom (faster and configurable) UI
- "Background" discovery
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Only the standard Palm discovery UI is supported
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Uses the Bluetooth library directly, in foreground mode
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Calls Palm's virtual serial driver, which uses the Bluetooth library in background mode
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Better control over the Bluetooth connection, especially when creating a connection or losing it
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Relies on the virtual serial driver to maintain the connection. The driver doesn't tell you if
a connection is lost
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BtSerial Pro is informed immediately when data is received
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BtSerial needs to poll for data
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The highly-optimized code used by BtSerial Pro uses less dynamic memory overall
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The virtual serial driver uses more memory than BtSerial Pro
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More connection configuration options available, for example the RFCOMM packet size
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Palm's "take-it-or-leave-it" driver is general purpose
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Can easily be extended to support simultaneous connections to multiple devices
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Can only support a single connection to one device
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Designed to be included in commercial products, where User Interface and control over the
Bluetooth connection is important.
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Designed to be used for non-commercial applications, or proof-of-concept.
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Easy to port into your own Palm application. Configuration options are defined in a header file.
Small, simple (fault-tolerant) API is easy to use
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Very easy to port into your own Palm application. Uses Palm's standard Serial Manager calls
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Works on OS4, OS5 (including Garnet) and OS6 (Cobalt)
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Works on OS4, OS5 (including Garnet) and OS6 (Cobalt)
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Provided as both a CodeWarrior project and a PODS 68K project
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Provided as both a CodeWarrior project and a PODS 68K project
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BtServer is a good Palm server to connect to. With BtSerial Pro on one Palm handheld
and BtServer on another, you essentially have a very simple "chat" application.
You can connect to many devices, including RS232-to-Bluetooth adaptors, sensors, mobile
phones and more.
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Download BtSerial Pro (ZIP or
PRC) and BtSerial (ZIP or
PRC). They are freeware, and can be used and distributed at no charge.
If you would like to suggest a new feature to be added to BtSerial or BtSerial Pro, or would like a custom version of the applications
created specially for you, please contact us.
A license to the source code of these applications is available. You can view the source code license agreement for
BtSerial Pro and BtSerial.
The source code is fully commented. The source code for both projects is provided as a Metrowerks CodeWarrior project and
a PODS 68K project. This code has been field tested by thousands of users worldwide!
PalmSource recommends CodeWarrior for the development of 68K apps and PODS for ARM-native (Protein) apps. You can use PODS to
develop 68K apps, but the debugging environment is not as good as provided by CodeWarrior.
You can purchase a license to the source code of these applications. You can download the source code immediately after paying,
using either a credit card or PayPal. If you'd prefer to pay on invoice, please contact us.
All source code comes with a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee!
You almost bought a license, but didn't? Please let us know why not. Your feedback will help us
improve the product.
Jochen Hammer writes:
"We purchased the BTSerial Pro Source code for developing a custom
specific Bluetooth driver for Satellite Forms from Pumatech. Whereas
the driver development itself was not a trivial task, it was really easy
to embed the BTSerial Pro source code to get the Bluetooth interface
working. The source code is straightforward, easy to read and well documented.
Using this properly designed software saved us approximately two weeks
of development and integration time. This does not mean, that we would
have been able to develop a similar Bluetooth driver within two weeks, but
this time was scheduled to get Palm's virtual serial driver running to
establish a Bluetooth connection in background mode. Thanks to the
BTSerial Pro sources we have a much more robust and reliable Bluetooth
connection running.
I can highly recommend this source code and advise every software
development manager that using this code is much cheaper than any in-house development."
Jochen Hammer
General Manager
Handheld Competence
www.handheld-competence.de
Werner Terreblanche writes:
"I bought the source code for BtSerial and was able to implement
Bluetooth in my GPS Acreage application within a very short time.
Now my users can connect to the Emtac bluetooth GPS just as easily as
they can do it with a normal serial cable and a conventional GPS.
I'm very happy about my decision to use the source code for BtSerial
in my application since it saved me time and money. In fact, I do
not even own a Bluetooth device, but was still able to implement it in my
code with the help of someone else who did the testing for me. This
would have been an impossible feat if I had to develop all the Bluetooth
code from scratch! I recommend this to anyone considering to add Bluetooth
into their existing application"
Werner Terreblanche
Senior Software Engineer
Wild Software
Developer of GPS Acreage
© Whizoo 2022
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