I love Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and all of the cool things that can be made with it. There are a growing number of Arduino and other devices that have BLE built right in. This is really great for interfacing with mobile devices. I quickly found that to create something cool that worked with my phone I needed to write a bunch of complicated Objective-C or Swift code and pay the $100 Apple Developer charge to load this onto my phone. I decided to make a Free app that anyone can download and create their own custom interface for all of their hardware hacking project. As a fun project I built a little car that can drive around and is powered with only the LightBlue Bean and an iPhone or iPod Touch.
This was made from parts I had lying around though you can still find all of the parts I used online. The motors I used here are a little weak with the 3.7 volt battery. I hope to make a new version with better motors and battery.
I used the Transistors to drive the motors (this version has no reverse) from pins 1 and 2 on the LightBlue Bean. I pulled power directly from the battery to have higher voltage for the motors and keep the motors from drawing too much current from the Atmega chip.
This is the home screen of Handy BLE. I created a new project by tapping the button and giving it a title of "Bean Car" and then I added buttons for left and right, flash the LED, and a button to go forward.
*This is the basics of my project and I will get more details and step by step instructions. Feel free to message me for more information or if anything is confusing.
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