Who Am I? And Why Should You Even Care?
I’m Mohammad Afaneh, a Bluetooth Developer and Founder of Novel Bits and the Bluetooth Developer Academy.
I’ve been on your journey before...
I’ve gone from a newbie to an expert in BLE development. Having worked with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) since 2014, I've experienced all the stages that you go through from being a beginner all the way up to becoming an expert in the field.
You might ask "What makes you qualified as a Bluetooth Expert"?
- I’ve self-published two top-rated books on the topic: Intro to Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth 5 & BLE: A Developer's Guide. Both of which have helped hundreds of developers get started with learning BLE and developing BLE products efficiently.
- I've created an educational YouTube video series all about Bluetooth Low Energy technology that's been watched and referenced by thousands of developers.
- I've consulted for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) for two and half years as the Developer Relations Manager for the Americas region.
- I've consulted for tens of startups and Fortune 500 companies on the design, architecture, and marketing of Bluetooth Low Energy products.
I’ve felt the pain of the often enormous learning curve associated with developing Bluetooth Low Energy products!
I've learned the hard way, wasting days and weeks getting up to speed while struggling with poor or non-existent resources.
...and that's why I started this website, blog, and this whole business (which I run full-time).
I hope you find the provided information and resources helpful for your throughout your BLE learning journey!
All the best,
Mohammad
Recent Blog Posts & Tutorials
Last Updated on April 18, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh To fully understand advertisements in BLE, we need to take a step back and learn about one of the layers within the architecture of BLE: the Generic Access Profile (GAP). GAP provides a framework that defines how BLE devices interact with each other. This includes: Roles of BLE devicesAdvertisements (Broadcasting, Discovery, Advertisement parameters, Advertisement data)Connection establishment (initiating connections, accepting connections, Connection parameters)Security There are four main…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh As a continuation of our series on Bluetooth beacons (part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here), today we’ll be covering Google’s Eddystone standard in more detail along with implementation. The Eddystone standard was released as an alternative and competitor to Apple’s iBeacon standard. It provides similar functionality to iBeacon, but also goes a step beyond and adds some unique features. With Eddystone, you…
Last Updated on April 11, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh Like a MAC address for LAN-connected devices, Bluetooth devices also have an identity address associated with each device. Understanding how Bluetooth addresses work is crucial for every BLE developer, especially when device privacy is a concern. So, what is a Bluetooth Address? A Bluetooth address sometimes referred to as a Bluetooth MAC address, is a 48-bit value that uniquely identifies a Bluetooth device. In the Bluetooth…
Last Updated on May 6, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh In BLE, there are many events and operations that can be exchanged between a Peripheral and a Central. Understanding these events is imperative for any BLE developer, and there are two aspects to achieving this: Learn the concepts in theory. Learn by analyzing them using a Bluetooth analyzer (sniffer) captures. I believe these two methods go hand in hand in helping achieve a full understanding of…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh Today (March 23, 2020), Silicon Labs released the next generation of their Bluetooth SoCs: the EFR32BG22 chipset family. The chipset features an ARM Cortex-M33 which supports the latest version of Bluetooth: version 5.2 (including features from versions 5.1 and 5.0). More importantly, the chipset features the following enhancements: Significantly lower power consumption compared to the previous generations (up to 60% lower) Enhanced security features including a…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh This tutorial represents a small portion of a complete course on BLE development for iOS in the Bluetooth Developer Academy. The course was developed in partnership with Anas Imtiaz, PhD. In this tutorial, we will look at developing iPhone/iPad apps that interface with a Bluetooth Low Energy peripheral to send/receive data. We will start by looking at Core Bluetooth, which is a framework provided by Apple…
Last Updated on April 18, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh Introduction A couple of months ago at CES 2020 (January 2020), the Bluetooth SIG introduced the latest version of Bluetooth, version 5.2. This announcement was made alongside the announcement of the next generation of Bluetooth audio, named: LE Audio. The major change introduced in version 5.2 is a new feature called Isochronous Channels (ISOC). ISOC lays the foundation for the implementation of LE Audio in BLE…
Last Updated on June 18, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh Introduction As a continuation of our series on Bluetooth beacons (part 1 here and part 2 here), today we cover Apple’s iBeacon standard in a bit more detail. iBeacon is especially useful for deploying location-awareness applications and monitoring user behavior within an area. It was introduced in iOS 7 and utilizes Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to send out advertisements that get discovered and utilized by other…
Last Updated on July 20, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh About two weeks ago (February 11, 2020), a group of Singaporean researchers released a group of vulnerabilities discovered in quite a few BLE vendor SDKs. They named the group of vulnerabilities “SweynTooth“. Here’s their explanation: The insight behind the name SweynTooth arrives from Sweyn Forkbeard, the son of King Harald Bluetooth (after whom the Bluetooth Technology was originally named). Sweyn revolted against Harald Bluetooth and this…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh Bluetooth beacons are alive and well due to the low cost and widespread usage in commercial spaces like retail stores and logistics. The technology itself has been around for a while but gained widespread awareness when Apple released its iBeacon protocol in 2013. Since then, adoption and uses have increased as businesses and developers come up with creative ways to use the technology. In part 1…
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