Configure Bluetooth Communication Settings

Discover Your Device

To connect to a Bluetooth® device from MATLAB®, your computer needs to have a built-in or external Bluetooth adapter. The adapter identifies Bluetooth devices within range when queried. After identifying nearby devices in the Bluetooth settings on your computer, you need to pair your device with your computer first before connecting to it from MATLAB.

On Windows®, you can pair to a device in Settings > Devices > Add Bluetooth or other device. The following shows the Windows Bluetooth settings where two of the devices in range have been paired—an audio device named E7 and a phone named Pixel 3. These are the same names you see in the bluetoothlist output.

Windows Bluetooth settings window

Use bluetoothlist to see a list of nearby Bluetooth devices and their connection statuses.

bluetoothlist
ans =

  4×4 table

             Name                 Address        Channel       Status    
    _______________________    ______________    _______    _____________

    "E7"                       "FC58FA8156E8"    1          "Ready to connect"    
    "Pixel 3"                  "3C286DD533CA"    8          "Ready to connect"  
    ""                         "98D331FB3B77"    Unknown    "Unknown"
    "mjin-maci"                "A886DDA44062"    Unknown    "Unknown"

bluetoothlist returns a table of four Bluetooth devices that are in the range of the adapter on the computer. You can see that both E7 and Pixel 3 are shown in the list and have the status "Ready to connect". You can connect to a Bluetooth device using bluetooth only if its status is "Ready to connect". For a complete list of possible statuses, see Status.

Connect to Your Device and View Properties

You can use bluetooth to connect to a device with either the name or address displayed in the output of bluetoothlist. If a device shows an empty string as its name, you must connect to it using its address. To successfully connect to your device, you must specify the same channel that appears in the output of bluetoothlist. If you do not specify the channel when you connect to a device, MATLAB attempts to connect to the default channel 1.

This example looks at the Pixel 3 phone in the previous section. The bluetoothlist output provides the information you need to create a bluetooth object for this device. You must specify either the name or address and the channel.

device = bluetooth("Pixel 3",8)
device = 

  bluetooth with properties:

                 Name: "Pixel 3"
              Address: "3C286DD533CA"
              Channel: 8
    NumBytesAvailable: 0
      NumBytesWritten: 0

  Show all properties

Click properties to view a full list of properties and their values for the bluetooth object device.

                      Name: "Pixel 3"
                   Address: "3C286DD533CA"
                   Channel: 8
         NumBytesAvailable: 0
           NumBytesWritten: 0

                 ByteOrder: "little-endian"
                   Timeout: 10
                Terminator: "LF"

         BytesAvailableFcn: []
    BytesAvailableFcnCount: 64
     BytesAvailableFcnMode: "off"

          ErrorOccurredFcn: []
                  UserData: []

See Also

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