MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MCDIG
CENTER FOR DIGITAL GEOLOGY
The Anycom Cards come in two different flavors, Compact Flash and PCMIA, which work in exactly the same fashion. For our purposes we chose the Compact Flash cards since they can be used in both laptops and PDA's with PocketPC. These cards offer a broad set of Bluetooth features, the most useful for a project like ours being the file transfer profile, serial port profile and BT ActiveSync. Anycom provides manuals for installing the cards and using the features, but I've also provided some info on usage below.
File Transfer Profile
The Bluetooth File Transfer operates much like a normal FTP program except that it takes place solely over Bluetooth and there is no differentiation between client and server. The program can be found under the Anycom Bluetooth Card Folder under Program Files in the iPaq or under Start->Programs on a Windows machine.
Once opened, the first step is to perform a search for other devices with the file transfer profile available. If the other device is using an Anycom card, it too must have the Bluetooth File Transfer program open to make the profile available, but do not perform searches simultaneously on the two devices as they will cancel each other out. If another device is found, it will appear in the window and you can highlight it and connect to it.
Once connected, the files of the other device will appear in the bottom window for browsing. Use the 'Get' and 'Put' buttons to start a file transfer in the desired direction.
Using the Bluetooth File Transfer I was able to get an average transfer speed of 6kbps, maxing at 15kbps.
Serial Port Profile
The Serial Port Profile allows you to send data between devices over Bluetooth as if there were a serial cable connecting the devices. To use this profile, you will need to open the Bluetooth Wizard, which can be found under the Anycom Bluetooth Card Folder under Program Files in the iPaq or under Start->Programs on a Windows machine
Click on the corresponding link for further instruction on how to setup the serial ports on the following OS's:
TIP: On Windows machines remember to set the speed of the Bluetooth modems to the speed of the device that you will be connecting. I recommend setting up multiple Bluetooth modems, each at a different speed so that you can simply switch COM ports if you will be connecting to devices with different port speeds.
Back to Research Page Back to Wireless Project Page
This portion of the site is maintained by Eric Fuller