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 May 19, 2020 by Mohammad AfanehIn last week’s tutorial (The Ultimate Bluetooth Mesh Tutorial (Part 1)) in this series on Bluetooth mesh, we covered the following: Basics of Bluetooth mesh Terminology: nodes, elements, states, properties, messages, addresses, publish-subscribe, and managed flooding. In this week’s tutorial, we’ll continue by covering a few more concepts within Bluetooth mesh, including: Models Scenes Types of nodes: Relay nodes Proxy nodes Friend nodes Low power nodes The…
Last Updated on April 12, 2021 by Mohammad Afaneh Bluetooth has been around for a while. In fact, it recently celebrated its 20th year anniversary! The introduction of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard came in 2010 to address the rapid growth of use cases in the Internet of Things (IoT) field including sensors, wearables, medical devices, etc. However, one thing that BLE lacked since the beginning was the capability of supporting a many-to-many topology…
Last Updated on May 6, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh In any BLE application, there are (at least) two devices involved: a BLE Peripheral device and a BLE Central device. Usually, the BLE Central is a smartphone, but that doesn’t mean it has to be! What if: you do not want to have to launch an app everytime you want to control a BLE Peripheral? you want to have a dedicated device that acts as the…
Last Updated on May 6, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh Let’s face it… One of the hardest things when working with BLE is simply getting started. Whether it’s the setup of the IDE, the configuration of the project, or the implementation the BLE application. I’ve been there… I’ve felt lost, not knowing where and how to start… This is especially true since I was trying to learn the technology itself (BLE) in addition to learning an…
Last Updated on May 7, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh In a previous blog post (The complete nRF Mac development tutorial), I went over how to set up your nRF development environment using the NetBeans IDE on a Mac. The beauty with NetBeans is that it’s cross-platform and customizable to fit your needs. I had been using NetBeans for over a decade, so I was very comfortable with customizing and modifying the different settings and configurations to make…
Last Updated on June 16, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh Introduction In this second post in the series on Bluetooth 5, we cover the new feature of improved 2x speed along with a general overview of throughput for a BLE application (the previous post went over Bluetooth 5’s new features in general and more specifically covered the increased advertisement capacity feature). First, we need to understand that the speeds advertised (1 Mbps and the new 2…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh You’ve probably heard so much about the recently released Bluetooth 5. You’ve seen all the hype on 2x Speed, 4x Range, and 8x Advertising data increase capabilities. But what does this all mean?? How does it achieve all these improvements? Is it really possible to achieve all these simultaneously?? What about power consumption? How is that affected? Look: There was so much media hype surrounding the release…
Last Updated on May 6, 2022 by Mohammad Afaneh You’re probably aware that adding Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to your device is one of the best ways to achieve a great user experience for your IoT device. Why is that, you may ask? Well, adding BLE allows your device to be connectable from a smartphone app. And we can all agree that smartphone apps have become very familiar to end-users and are very user-friendly. However,…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh If you’re just getting started with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), just looking to learn more about it, or exploring different ways to stay up-to-date then read on. Here are a few steps to get you started: Sign up for my FREE 7-day BLE email crash course: most books out there on the topic of Bluetooth Low Energy are pretty dated! Before committing to a book, I recommend…
Last Updated on May 19, 2020 by Mohammad Afaneh [Update] I’ve published a more up-to-date version of this blog post that covers all three major operating systems (macOS, Windows, and Linux) using a different IDE. Check it out here: The complete cross-platform nRF development tutorial Today’s tutorial focuses on setting up the environment for nRF52 Mac development and debugging for Bluetooth Low Energy applications. Specifically, I will be using the new Nordic nRF52840 Preview Development…
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