Click on the button "Select task" of device panel A or B and select "Connect to Bluetooth LE device". Make sure your BLE device is turned ON, within range and is in discoverable mode.

Scanning for BLE devices will start and all discovered devices will be added to the list (name, device MAC address, and signal strength will be displayed)

Discovering of nearby devices has following options:

• Discover only devices that advertise its name - as name implies, only devices that advertise their name will be discovered, other devices will be ignored.

• Discover all devices - all nearby devices will be added to the list. If a device that does not advertise its name is discovered, its name will be displayed as [No name].

Default option is to discover only devices that advertise its name. You can change this in the "Settings" under "Bluetooth scanning" section.

Once your BLE device has been discovered, click on it and click on a button "Read services". Alternatively you can just double click on a selected device and services will be retrieved. At this point scanning for nearby devices is stopped.

In this example, we want to connect to BLE device MLT-BT05. It was successfully found by a scanner, so we just double click on it.

App can start listening TCP server which allows connection of one TCP client. To start TCP server click on "Select task" button and select "Start TCP server". On the next screen enter valid port number and click "Start Server". The IP address displayed is an address of your device. However your device can be connected to multiple networks at the same time (ethernet, WiFi network...), so this IP address might be only one of multiple IP addresses assigned to your PC by DNS servers. When TCP server is started, it binds to all network interfaces. When you are connecting to the server from your client, you need to know IP address of the TCP server on that network (of that network interface). For example if you are connecting from a smarphone using WiFi connection, you need to know address of wireless network adapter of your PC. A simple way to check IP addresses of your PC is to run Command prompt and enter command "ipconfig".

When a connection is established and client disconnects itself, TCP server will automatically start listening for new connections.

Application can connect to a remote TCP server using TCP client. TCP server can be created on other PC, smartphone or any other device supporting TCP protocol. If you want to connect to TCP server on another PC make sure firewall is not blocking connections from TCP clients.

To connect to a remote TCP server, click on a "Select task" and select "Start TCP client". On the configuration page you need to enter IP address of TCP server and port number on which this server is listening. Then click "Connect to Server" and TCP client will attempt to connect to specified TCP server.

If for some reason connection is terminated or TCP server closes connection, TCP client will not reconnect automatically.

Connectionless UDP socket can be created in the app also. You can specify local listening port number. For remote device (remote UDP socket) you need to know and enter its IP address and a port number on which remote UDP socket is listening.

Unlike TCP, UDP is connectionless communication - no active connection is created when you create an UDP socket. Data transmitted over network are individually addressed and routed based on information carried in each data packet. Therefore status of this connection (on the Connection overview page) does not differentiate between connected / disconnected state.

Application can communicate with a connected device that exposes a serial port or some abstraction of a serial port. It is possible to set following serial-specific parameters: baud rate [bps], data bits, flow control(handshake), parity, stop bits and read timeout [ms].

Read timeout specifies wait time from reception of a first byte for all subsequent bytes. It has no effect on the first byte of a read call. Read calls always wait forever for the first byte. For example, if you set read timeout = 10000ms = 10s and sender sends one byte each second, data received event will be raised(data displayed in log and retransmitted to other device) after 10 seconds with the payload length of 10 bytes.

Which devices are supported? Following section is from Windows documents:

Windows natively supports ports exposed by Serial-to-USB adapters that belong to the USB-CDC device class using the inbox usbser.sys driver (such as those used in Arduino Uno R3s). USB-CDC compatible Ids are:

• USB\Class_02&SubClass_02&Prot_01

• USB\Class_02&SubClass_02

Other Serial-to-USB adapters (such as FTDI/Prolific/Silicon-Labs) that expose GUID_DEVINTERFACE_COMPORTs are also supported, but require additional vendor-specific drivers.

***

In this example we use USB to UART converter device C232HD (FTDI chip). As stated above, this device requires vendor-specific drivers, which can be downloaded from manufacturer website. We have already done that, so now the device is connected to the PC ands detected by the application on virtual COM port 7. We select it from the list and setup its parameters as in the following picture. To finish the setup we click "Connect" button. Serial device is now ready.

In both application modes, data can be send to remote devices directly from the application. There are 2 ways:

• using simple text box (see below),

• define command (see section Creating commands).

When using simple text box, you can select between hexadecimal or text form. To switch between these two options, click on "0x/txt" button - its content will change accordingly. Enter value (either valid hexadecimal number or text) and click "Send". In the checkboxes "A" and "B" you can specify to which connected devices(s) you want to send the data. Data will also appear in the log.

Note: From version 2.0.1 each device has its own TX checkbox which indicates if data from application shall be sent to this device.

This feature is useful for debugging purposes, when you want to test established connections, check correct port numbers or other connection parameters. String length which can be send to remote devices is limited to 40 characters (20 bytes). If entered hexadecimal number consist of odd number of characters, zero will be automatically appended at the beginning.

In both modes, application allows you to define custom commands which can be sent to connected devices. Command is a payload with predefined value with assigned name and other optional parameters. Commands are stored in a list. To display this list (if hidden) click on "Open pane" button in the bottom of left control panel. To add a command click "+" button at the bottom and select type of a command to add. To delete all existing commands, click on "..." button and select "Remove all commands". Button "square" disables periodical sending of all commands which are currently being send (see following section).

Data transmitted from the application and incoming data from remote devices can be viewed in the log in both application modes. To log incoming data from remote devices turn on toggle button "Log incoming data" above the log. Data logging is not enabled by default since it can slow down data retransmission (if you use high transfer speeds and large amount of data you might notice a delay when logging is enabled).

In a drop-down menu you can select in which format you want to display incoming data.

• HEX - data will be displayed as a hexadecimal number.

• TXT - data will be displayed as a text using encoding selected in application settings.

When incoming message is displayed in a log, it consist of data identifier (name of the device from which message is received and optionally a time stamp of reception) and data itself. Data identifiers can be customised in settings. Size of the font used for logging can also be changed in settings.

In the following example 2 devices are active (BLE device MLT-BT05 and TCP client) and application is receiving data from both. You can identify sender by its name.

To access application settings click on the gear symbol in the bottom left corner in the main screen.

• Log font size - allows to adjust font size in log. Might be useful when you need to check the log from distance.

• Message limit in log determines how many lines can main log contain. If this limit is exceeded, oldest messages will be automatically removed. This limit is adjustable within range of 100 - 4000 lines.

• Message identifier content - allows to specify data identifier for incoming and outgoing messages. Time stamp contains time of the message reception or transmission.

• Show message identifier - lets you select when you want the message identifier to be shown. Options are: never, always and only if sender changes.

• Encoding - Encoding used when parsing received and transmitted data.

• Appearance mode - Application theme can be changed between light, dark and system theme. Change in the theme setting will be applied after application restart.

• Bluetooth scanning - you can select type of Bluetooth scanning from 2 modes: Discover only devices that advertise its name or Discover all devices.

To save changes in settings, click on the "Save" button. If you click "Cancel", all changes are discarded.

This application is available in Microsoft store.

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