REcommended bluetooth low energy products and tools
This is a collection of tools and products that we recommend for learning to develop and test Bluetooth Low Energy connected products.
Disclaimer: this section features several affiliate links, meaning Novel Bits may earn a small commission if you purchase through these links at no cost to you. I personally own the majority of these products so my recommendations come from experience, not simply listing products I know about.
Development and testing Tools
Bluetooth 4.0 USB Dongle
This low-cost USB dongle can help provide a development and testing interface to a BLE chipset. It can be used with a Python library to issues the commands and retrieve events from the device.
Spanalytics PANalyzr (Sniffer)
This advanced Bluetooth Low Energy protocol analyzer (sniffer) is one of the best tools out there for capturing BLE communication.
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Adafruit Bluefruit LE UART Friend
The Bluefruit LE UART Friend makes it easy to add Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity to anything with a hardware or software serial port. It even has hardware flow control so you won't have to worry about losing data.
Ubertooth One (Sniffer)
Everything you need to get started with 2.4GHz development, including Ubertooth One module installed into a custom shielded aluminum enclosure and a 2.4GHz duck antenna!
Siglent Technologies Digital Oscilloscope
SIGLENT’s new Super Phosphor Oscilloscope is available in 100 and 200 MHz bandwidths and 2 or 4 analog channels. Great value at a great price, especially compared to similar offerings from other big name vendors.
Siglent Technologies Arbitrary Waveform - Function Generator
This SIGLENT arbitrary waveform and function generator provides users with a variety of high fidelity / low jitter signals while meeting the growing requirements of a wide range of complex and varied applications.
Weller Soldering Station
Capable of producing temperatures up to 900°F to handle many soldering projects. The station includes a Weller certified ST3 iron-plated copper tip to help keep the temperature consistent while making soldering joints.
HackRF One Software Defined Radio
HackRF One is an open source Software Defined Radio peripheral capable of reception of radio signals from 1MHz to 6GHz. Designed to enable test and development of modern and next-generation radio technologies, can be used as a USB peripheral or stand-alone operation.
Seeed Studio XIAO nRF52840 Sense
As the advanced version of the board XIAO BLE, Seeed XIAO BLE Sense has equipped a powerful Nordic nRF52840 MCU which is designed in a Bluetooth 5.0 module, built around 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 CPU with Floating-Point Unit (FPU) operating at 64 MHz.
ESP32-DevKitM-1 Development Board
ESP32-DevKitM-1 is an ESP32-MINI-1(1U)-based development board produced by Espressif. Most of the I/O pins are broken out to the pin headers on both sides for easy interfacing. Users can either connect peripherals with jumper wires or mount ESP32-DevKitM-1 on a breadboard.
ESP32-S3-BOX Development Board
The ESP32-S3-BOX is an AIoT development board that's based on Espressif’s ESP32-S3 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 5 (LE) SoC. It provides a platform for developing the control of home appliances using Voice Assistance + touch and screen controller, sensor, infrared controller, and intelligent Wi-Fi gateway.
