This Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Shield from Red Bear Lab lets you communicate with Bluetooth 4.0 devices. Bluetooth Low Energy aims to reduce the power consumption of Bluetooth communication whilst maintaining a similar range.

Possible applications you could use this shield for are

• Control your Arduino pins with the Red Bear Lab App or with your own mobile App
• Send sensor data from your Arduino to an App for processing
• Use your mobile device as an internet gateway for your Arduino
• Robot control
• and much more!

This BLE shield can work at both 3.3V and 5V, so works with wide range of Arduino compatible boards.

• iOS 6 or 7: iPhone 5 (all models), iPhone 4S, iPad Air, iPad (3rd gen or later), iPad mini (all models) and iPod touch (5th gen or later)
• Android 4.3 devices with BLE hardware: Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Samsung Note 3.

1. Besides the on-board PCB antenna, there is the option to use an SMA connector for an external antenna (soldering is required)
2. Flexible REQN and RDYN pins selectable from pin 2 to 12, these pins are fixed at 8 & 9 for BLE Shield v1
3. Reset button also resets the Arduino board, and vice versa
4. ICSP header provides Vcc (for other shields to get power source)
5. ICSP header now passes through (for other shields to connect to the SPI)
6. Shield's reset is controllable by Arduino pin 4 or 7
7. Reset signal to the shield is now active low (i.e. pull low to reset the shield)
8. Added test points for power consumption measurement of the nRF8001 chip (soldering is required)
9. Added circuitry and test pin (J9 NC) for measurement of instant working current (using logic analyzer, 1mA = 100mV). 

• Nordic nRF8001 Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity IC
• Support Peripheral (Slave) role operation only - nRF8001 IC limitation
• Proprietary simple serial interface (ACI)

Useful Links

Tutorial showing how to get started using the BLE Shield with the Seeeduino 3.0

More information on the Red Bear Lab website