Bluetooth

[programme957]

Do you have any experience using bluetooth? I am hoping to use a higher baud rate if thats possible, Currently very slow transferring images at 115200 baud. The CS20 controller streams video albeit at much reduced resolution so I was wondering what speed the bluetooth might be able to operate on. My instinct is that a cable is faster and more reliable.

My instrument allows a baud rate of 921600 to be selected (for cable and for bluetooth) but i dont think the serial to USB converter can handle that speed. Maybe that's what I need to look at.

[MrClock8163]

I've been almost exclusively using bluetooth for development and testing (on the 2 instruments that support it), with 9600 baud, which is pretty standard for older instruments too. I haven't done any speed testing yet.

Overall the serial profile bluetooth connection is less stable (especially as you approach the border of the range of the bluetooth modem). I haven't run into any data corruption issues, but the connection is slower to establish. Bluetooth connections also have a higher chance to fail to even initialize (probably due to the slow initial response of the instrument). If you write a bluetooth based application, you should expect to have to retry the connection at least once before signaling a failure to the user.

[MrClock8163]

Also, the controllers like the CS10, 15, 20 and 35 usually use long range radio connection (if you have a radio handle, eg. RH16 or RH17). But at the very least, they use the binary version of the GeoCOM protocol, which is not publicly documented. Binary communication is inherently better suited for data transfer.

[MrClock8163]

With the new commands I mentioned #67 I did some testing for bluetooth speed. On the TCRP1201+ that I had access to this week, the download of a ~660KiB file took almost 3 minutes to complete. Granted, it is a pretty old total station, and seemingly it doesn't allow to change the bluetooth baud from 9600.

It's not much development, but it's something.

[programme957]

Thanks I'll have a look at that