Open Source Comes to Bluetooth

By Michael Foley

(03/30/01, 01:03:38 PM EDT)

RidgeRun is contributing source code for the Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) to the OpenBT Bluetooth stack open source project. SDP enables Bluetooth wireless device users to automatically get on-demand services.

The OpenBT Linux Bluetooth stack, sponsored by Axis Communications, is an open source Bluetooth stack for Linux and other operating systems. OpenBT covers the SDP/L2CAP/RFCOMM layers of the Bluetooth stack. The SDP component of the stack allows Bluetooth devices to automatically discover other nearby Bluetooth devices and communicate the services each provides.

RidgeRun has created the Bluetooth Piconet Neighborhood application that enables users to find services, such as printing, file sharing, e-commerce, or e-mail, and released the new SDP application code to the Open Source community as part of the OpenBT project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openbt.

A Bluetooth piconet constitutes the units sharing a common channel. Up to eight interconnected devices can be supported on a single piconet, consisting of one master and up to seven slave devices.

SDP will be incorporated into RidgeRun's upcoming distribution of DSPLinux, which is focused on Texas Instruments' Digital Signal Processors (DSPs).