Connecting to a Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor from WP8

Question

Is there any way to connect to Bluetooth Low Energy devices from Windows Phone 8? e.g. Heart Rate Monitors such as the Polar H7.

Some background I've tried:

• I've seen this sample for Windows 8 - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowshardware/Bluetooth-Generic-4f4ea968/view/Discussions - which seems to require quite a deep level of knowledge.
• I've seen this closed question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13224392/nokia-lumia-920-and-bluetooth-low-energy-devices
• I've implemented WP8 Bluetooth support for Sphero myself (see https://github.com/slodge/BallControl/)
• I've read about other SPP level code - e.g. http://metroeeg.codeplex.com/documentation?referringTitle=Home&ANCHOR#GettingStarted - this seems to say 'As a rule WP8 apps can only speak to paired devices.' - but I can't find any way to pair my HRM with my Lumia 920

I can't seem to find any information about WP8 and Bluetooth LE devices. Are these supported? Can WP8 talk to my Polar H7 Heart Rate monitor?

Answer 1

Currently Windows Phone only supports the RFCOMM protocol over Bluetooth 2.0. The device minimum hardware spec currently doesn't include BT4.0 LE - even though some of the devices support it, it doesn't feature in the APIs. This is because the health devices using BTLE support the GATT protocol, and the current proximity stack using RFCOMM allowing scenarios such as Serial Port Profile support.

This leaves us with devices such as Sphero, and MetaWatch able to connect to the phone - but unfortunately not the latest generation of health and fitness device.

Polar do currently make a BT 2.0 heart rate monitor if you want something to pair to your 920 :)