BLE Shield stands for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Shield. It is designed to work with Arduino boards or compatibles, including Arduino Uno, Mega 2560, Leonardo and Due. It allows you to connect your Arduino boards with other BLE Central device like a smartphone or tablet. So you can develop some applications like:

• Control your Arduino pins with our/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
• and much more!

BLE shield could operate under 3.3V or 5V, therefore it works with a lot of Arduino compatible boards too.

Current Supported BLE Central Devices:

iOS 7

• iPhone 4s
• iPhone 5 (all models)
• iPod touch 5
• iPad 3/4/mini/Air

Android 4.3 or above (4.4 recommended for stability) with Bluetooth 4.0 hardware support

• Nexus 4
• Nexus 5
• Nexus 7
• other compatible Android devices reported by our users 

Windows Phone 8.1

• Nokia Lumia 630

Windows 8.1 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 or USB dongle

Mac OSX 10.9.2 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 or USB dongle

Linux with BlueZ 5.1 with built-in Bluetooth 4.0 or USB dongle

Getting Started

We recommend using Codebender, an online development and collaboration platform for all Arduino users, please read to our Quick Start with Codebender to start playing with your Blend Micro in just a few easy steps.

We have also prepared a detail guide Getting Started with BLE Shield to show you how to program your Blend Micro with Arduino IDE.

Resources

BLE Shield Respository - Provides BLE Shield resources such as schematics.

Nordic Bluetooth Smart SDK for Arduino - Provides a lot of BLE tutorials and examples for BLE beginners to work with the BLE Shield, supported by Nordic.

RedBearLab nRF8001 library - Provides simple APIs for exchanging data between BLE central and the BLE Shield

Support

For questions about Nordic Bluetooth low energy SDK for Arduino, please visit Nordic Developer Zone

All other questions regarding BLE Shield, please go to BLE Shield Forum