Broadcast message or file to nearby Bluetooth devices

Question

A client of ours is attending a business fair and would like to push some sort of "welcome message" to people visiting their space.

I'm not too familiar with Bluetooth, so I have a few questions:

• What kind of content can you transfer via Bluetooth? (Is it files only or is it possible to send a simple text message?)
• Is it possible to push content only to recipients within a certain distance? (ie. based on signal strength or similar)
• Can anybody recommend a piece of software that can do some or all of the above?

If necessary we could program a custom solution ourselves (.NET), but I'm sure there must be a program out there that can do the job.

I've googled a bit and came across the 32feet.NET framework - does anybody have any experience with this framework?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

There's a Bluetooth profile supported by nearly all devices (well not headphones!) called OPP that's Obex Object Push, which uses the OBEX protocol as defined by the IrDA. It can carry any file type, but the receiving device may not know what to do with all types... Previously only support for vCards was common (address book, tasks/appointments, etc).

The 32feet.NET library includes support for OBEX and Bluetooth directly, see the examples in the user guide. There's also a companion library Brecham.Obex that provides more specialised OBEX support. We support the built-in Microsoft and the Widcomm bluetooth stacks on the PC, but not yet BlueSoleil[5] but installing the MSFT stack is simple.

There are also products specifically designed for proximity advertising, see a great list posted in our forums: Most popular Bluetooth Marketing Softwares and e.g. 4

[5]: I did the big job of adding Widcomm support on my own time, as I'm now out of work I'm looking for funding to add support for BlueSoleil.