Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a technology that enables wireless communication between devices. BLE is commonly used in IoT devices and other wearable technologies, and most many modern smartphones support it. If you’re building a Flutter app that needs to communicate with BLE devices, the flutter_blue package is a great resource. This package makes connecting to, discovering, and interacting with nearby BLE devices in Flutter easy.
Therefore, this blog highlights the basics of using flutter_blue and provides some code examples to help you get started.
Connecting to a BLE Device
The first step in communicating with a BLE device is establishing a connection. To do this, you’ll need to get the device’s Bluetooth address, which is a unique identifier for the device. You can usually find the Bluetooth address in the device’s documentation or by scanning for available devices using the flutter_blue package.
Once you have the Bluetooth address, you can use the connect method of the BluetoothDevice class to establish a connection as demonstrated below:
Discovering BLE Devices
If you don’t know the Bluetooth address of the device, you want to connect with, you can use the flutter_blue package to scan for available devices. Next, you’ll need to create a FlutterBlue instance and use the startScan method to start the scan. Here’s an example of how to do this:
Interacting with BLE Devices
Once you’ve established a connection with a BLE device, you can interact with it using its services and characteristics. A service is a collection of related characteristics representing a specific aspect of the device, such as its temperature sensor or battery status. A characteristic is a value that represents a specific aspect of the device, such as its name or manufacturer.
Looking for custom development services?
To access a service and its characteristics, you’ll need to use the discoverServices method of the BluetoothDevice class to discover the device’s services. Refer to the following:
Once you have the services, you can access their characteristics using the characteristics property of the BluetoothService class. Here’s an example of how to do this:
Reading and Writing Characteristics
Once you have access to a characteristic, you can read its value using the BluetoothCharacteristic class’s read method. Here’s an example of how to do this:
You can also write a value to a characteristic using the write method of the BluetoothCharacteristic class. Please see the following example:
Conclusion:
Connecting BLE devices with Flutter using BLE communication provides a powerful toolset for developing cross-platform mobile applications that can communicate with a wide range of BLE devices. By leveraging the FlutterBlue library, developers can easily scan for and connect to BLE devices, and then communicate with them using a variety of standard BLE communication protocols.
By following the process of connecting BLE devices with Flutter, developers can create powerful mobile applications that can interact with a wide range of devices, such as sensors, beacons, and wearables, and can provide users with rich and interactive experiences.