As an introduction to Bluetooth with Arduino or Raspberry Pi, I recommend using a component called the HM-10 [datasheet here]. The HM-10 is a Bluetooth low energy module that employ Bluetooth 4.0, which is currently the most widely used protocol for wireless devices (along with Wifi, but I will discuss this later). All of the current iPhones, Androids, and Google phones use Bluetooth 4.0, and it will likely be around for quite a while. The module is powered at 3.3V and consumes around 50mA (peak), 8.5mA (nominal), and can sleep with a current between 400uA - 1.5mA. It claims to have an open-space transmission range of 100m, and boasts transfer rates at 2 kilobytes per second. The underlying chip is a Texas Instruments CC-2540/2541 [see here]. The HM-10 is particularly germane because it cooperates nicely with the Arduino software with a mere four lines of code in the IDE.
Read More