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Is it possible to use a mini USB Bluetooth dongle like in the following picture in order to improve my Arduino Uno, so it can comunicate with other Bluetooth devices?

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If it is, how can I do that?

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2 Answers 2

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It is, in theory, possible, to make your Arduino talk USB to the Bluetooth dongle. Usually, however, the better solution is to buy a serial-to-bluetooth module, and connect that to the serial pins on your Arduino, or to pins on Arduino compatible usable by the SoftwareSerial library.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks man. I will seek more a obut this topic. May be I can even open the USB dongle and take out the things I need. \$\endgroup\$ Mar 13, 2013 at 19:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ @user1754322 - That's unlikely. Most of those USB-bluetooth adapters have pretty much just one IC in them, that does everything. Also, the RF layout is pretty touchy, so you can't easily just breadboard it. \$\endgroup\$ Jul 7, 2013 at 21:16
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No, the Arduino Uno can not use the Bluetooth dongle for two reasons:

  • To use an USB peripheral device such as the dongle, the Arduino would need to be a USB host mode, or USB OTG mode device. The Uno does not support host or OTG mode, though the Arduino Due and the Arduino ADK do.
  • To support a Bluetooth dongle, you also need a "Bluetooth stack" on the host that supports a dongle. While there are some efforts out there to design such an open source stack for the Arduinos that support Host Mode, and possibly for "USB host shields", there isn't anything stable for USB dongles, that I know of, yet.

USB Host Shield:

USB Host Shield (source)

Note that such shields usually do not have support for generic USB Bluetooth dongles. If there are some which do, a link would be interesting.


Your other options are to either acquire one of those Arduino models that do support Host Mode, then experiment with the Bluetooth stacks available for it, or to use a Bluetooth module such as the Bluetooth Bee, or shields incorporating Bluetooth, and use those.

Serial Bluetooth Shield:

Bluetooth Shield (source)

The Bluetooth Bee:

Bluetooth Bee (source)
Requires a shield that supports the Zigbee type pin-out. Note that the Xbee pins are not the common 0.1 inch spacing, but a less common 1 mm spacing.

Shields that support ZigBee format modules:

Wireless SD shield (source) Seeed Studio XBee Shield (source)

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    \$\begingroup\$ It's worth noting that if you are a really, really awesome programmer, you could probably use a plain-old arduino to bit-bang a USB host. However, if you're that skilled of an embedded programmer, you probably wouldn't need to ask if it were possible. \$\endgroup\$ Mar 13, 2013 at 4:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ConnorWolf There you go :-) \$\endgroup\$ Mar 13, 2013 at 4:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ You are right :). Anyway, it is never late to learn. Thanks! \$\endgroup\$ Mar 13, 2013 at 19:44
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    \$\begingroup\$ @user1754322 I believe the accepted answer is incorrect, thereby. \$\endgroup\$ Mar 14, 2013 at 2:48

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