If you have been working with the Nordic nRF51822 platform or mbed's Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) API, then you probably have come across some of Kevin Townsend's work on the mbed community. Recently I got a chance to catch up with him to find out more about the book he recently co-authored and published, ‘Getting Started with Bluetooth Low Energy,’ with Carles Cufi, Robert Davidson and Akiba. This book does a good job of explaining the basic concepts of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), its history and it simplifies the concepts and vocabulary used around Bluetooth LE for all developers wanting to get started with this new ultra low power wireless technology.

Kevin said, one of the reasons he decided to contribute to this book, is that he finds the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Bluetooth LE technology trend to be particularly interesting; in that it has never been easier for small companies and hobbyist engineers to successfully make innovative products without large financial backing and lots of development resources. This is in part due to Bluetooth SIG's decision to add Bluetooth LE to the standard (BT 4.0 onwards), allowing many of the barriers to developing with this technology to be removed for hardware and software developers. This is also, one of the reasons why he chose to identify the mbed platform as a useful tool to create customized firmware for Bluetooth LE peripherals within Chapter 10 of the book. As much of the mbed community knows well, “many of the messy firmware implementation issues and setup problems are conveniently buried in the easy-to-use online tools and high-level APIs,” not requiring familiarity with configuring an embedded toolchain or prior knowledge of working with embedded hardware.

Additionally the book describes a sample project with the mbed-enabled Nordic nRF51822 platform to show you how to apply the concepts learned within the book in the real world.

This book is now on sale and can be ordered on Amazon, here.