Elastic Sheep

The BC417143-based module can be programmed through its SPI interface using a simple parallel port interface.

I am using the circuit published on Byron’s blog.

The SPI protocol is bit-banged on the parallel port of the PC. The 5V to 3.3V level adaptation is done using resistor dividers.

The SPI pins are accessed through a right-angle header on the bottom of the breakout board I designed.

The 3.3V power supply is supplied by a 3.3V Teensy2 that is also used as a serial-to-USB interface.

The difficult part is to find a PC with a parallel port . CSR also distributes an USB-SPI interface that should be more convenient with a modern laptop but that is also a little more expensive than a DB25 connector and some wires.

The Bluetooth module can now be programmed/configured using the BlueSuite tools. BlueSuite can be downloaded from the CSR support website after registration (Click Browse category tree…/Bluetooth PC Software).