Bluetooth Vic20

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beamrider
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Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

Would something like this work with the Vic-20?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wireless-Seri ... 2c831100c2
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Mike
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by Mike »

... to do exactly what? :|

The electrical interface is a trivial matter, you'd have to write software that amounts to something alike the Bluetooth stack on contemporary machines, for file transfer, providing the VIC-20 keyboard as input device for PCs, etc.
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

to do the same kind of things you can do with the serial port?

As far as I understand it, no bluetooth stack is required. You can configure it with standard AT style modem commands and then simply send/receive serial data. Of course there needs to be a paired device on the other end doing *something* with that data...
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Mike
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by Mike »

The serial port is only used to transport data to and from the Bluetooth device. That's the trivial matter. What is done with the data sent to the transmitter, and received from the transmitter is entirely at the discretion of the Bluetooth protocol.

Edit:
beamrider wrote:You can configure it with standard AT style modem commands and then simply send/receive serial data. Of course there needs to be a paired device on the other end doing *something* with that data...
Well, I didn't find anything like that in the description. If it works like a modem, fine. Still, as you wrote, you'd have to pair it, and how this is done is something that belongs to the Bluetooth interface.
Last edited by Mike on Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

I'm not sure I understand you. As far as I can see the device implements RS232 on top of the bluetooth stack. So if you had a similar device at the other end, wouldn't it just act like a NULL modem cable?
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Mike
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by Mike »

I searched for some other docu in the 'net (the ebay auction wasn't very detailled, as I wrote).

From what I found, you actually can configure the module with AT commands to set the name, the pairing password, the speed, and its 'role' (slave or master). You'd possibly first need to configure it on a PC to set a baud rate that works on the VIC-20.

After that, well, you can do a transparent wireless RS232 connection to another Bluetooth device. :)

Note: ... I don't see anything on that board that amounts to an Arduino here. The HC-05 module is mounted on a second PCB which hosts level shifters. It is of course possible to use a pair of these devices, one with the Arduino and one with the VIC-20 and do some serious microcontroller programming then. ;)
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

Yes, that was were I was comming from.

Agreed, I don't think there's anything Arduino specific about it. I really wanted to check electrical compatiblity and how it could be mounted (internally) or externally in a casing (perhaps 3d printed) that plugs to the user port.

There are many possibilities:

- Vic20 <-> Vic20

- Vic20 <-> mobile phone [or tablet] running a (companion/slave) app for:
  1. - playing samples
  • - text to speech
  • - tweeting
  • - up/downloading small files from the internet..
  • - multiplayer support
  • - uploading hi-scores to a high-score server
  • - ......
- Vic20 <-> Peripheral
-
  1. Game controller<?>
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

I've just ordered a couple of these along with a USB To RS232 TTL convertor so I can set up the inital rate to 300 baud on the PC.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171443526996? ... EBIDX%3AIT

It looks like I will have to do my development on a real Vic as Vice doesn't appear have a facility to output to real COM ports, but to a tcp/ip endpoint?
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by joshuadenmark »

Exciting project, will lurk from the side.
Kind regards, Peter.
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

Well I had a bit of spare time and so made a start on this.

I managed to get comunication working between an emulated Vic-20 and my Android phone under Vice using the feature that exposes the host serial port as the Vic user port.

It was quite easy to setup and the total cost of the components is about $10. These are the parts I used:

Connector PC to bluetooth HC05

HC05 itself

User port connector

Next step is to solder up to the user port and try it out on the real Vic. If it works OK then move on to an Android host app. Inital idea is to serve up speech and sound samples. Don't know how feasible it would be, but I would like to try and hack the speech samples from mame into Commodore Gorf.

See evidence below..

Image
Image
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taborj
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by taborj »

Holy crap, that's very awesome! I'm eagerly following this project.
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by joshuadenmark »

This is cool - old meeting new technology :D
Kind regards, Peter.
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

..and here it is working on a real Vic.

[youtube]32s0W7j9c80[/youtube]
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Misfit
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by Misfit »

Nice,

Do you use SPP (Serial Port Profile) or is it AT-command based serial interface? You have to send PIN-code commands etc..

If it provides a normal SPP, it is very easy to create Windows and Android applications for it. Actually all Windows applications which use COM-ports work with it. You have to create virtual COM ports via bluetooth settings and that's it..
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beamrider
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Re: Bluetooth Vic20

Post by beamrider »

You just need to lower the baud rate of the device with an AT command to 2400 on a PC first (which gets remembered), then you can pair it with your phone and connect to it without any further config after that. No need to create virtual COM ports.

Yes, it uses SPP which means that many apps can talk to it, hence the use of Blue-term, and yes, it's easy to listen on Android once paired using the provided APIs.

http://developer.android.com/reference/ ... ocket.html


I'm not really interested in PC development, since most people will have a phone or tablet (that will have bluetooth) that can easily be placed next to the Vic-20 more conveniently than using a PC. Although, once we have a server up and running, nothing stop it being ported to the PC. An iOS version would be neat as well [assuming that Apple allow such things...]

[edit: Looks like a no go on Apple - http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3647 ]
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