So I am planning on going wireless with my robots and I was wondering which one I should buy. I was looking at sparkfun and I found many blutooth. What qualities should I look for are some better than others? Also I intend to use the bluetooth for only about 100-150 ft and I am mostly going to use it for the arduino. This is what I found so far:
If you need range of up to 150 feet you will need class 1 bluetooth modules at both ends, so the $40 bluesmirf silver (class 2) module is not recommended. May I suggest:
$45 RN-41-SM (requires desoldering two surface mount resistors) - This is the same module used in the bluesmirf gold from sparkfun but for $20 less. I suggest configuring this for maximum output power (20dBm) to achieve the greatest range.
It is not hard to configure. Provide power to the bluetooth module and use your computer to do a Bluetooth search and add the device. This will create a COM port associated with it as it uses serial port profile (SPP). I recommend using the terminal program TeraTerm Professional (Free) to send commands to it. You can then send commands at 9600 baud on the serial COM port setup for the bluetooth connection using the command set in the Roving Networks documentation. I now know of a $10 class 2 module (meaning a 30 foot range) which is configurable via serial UART only, not serial UART + Bluetooth like the Roving Networks modules.
