The RN-41 is a small form factor, low power, simple to integrate Bluetooth radio for OEMs adding wireless capability to their products.
The RN-41 is perfect for battery powered applications and by default is ready to use in the SPP (Serial Port Profile) configuration. It uses only 250 uA in sleep mode while still being discoverable and connectable. Multiple low power modes available allow you to dial in the lowest power profile for your application.
The RN-41 supports multiple Bluetooth profiles, is fully certified, and is simple to design in, making it a complete embedded Bluetooth solution.
With its high performance on-chip antenna and support for Bluetooth Enhanced Data Rate (EDR), the RN-41 delivers up to 3 Mbps data rate for distances to 100 meters. The RN-41 is the perfect product for engineers adding Bluetooth capability to their product without spending significant time and money to develop Bluetooth specific hardware and software.
The RN-41 can be configured in different modes:
HCI Mode: In this mode the Bluetooth stack is running on an external processor (not on RN-41)
There are two possible hardware interface options:
- UART: This is called HCI over H4. The external processor running the stack is interfaced to the RN-41 using the UART interface. The baud rate at which the RN-41 talks to the processor is fixed and needs to be programmed (in the RN-41) during the firmware flash process. Customers need to specify this while ordering.
- USB: In this mode, the RN-41 is interfaced to the external processor using a USB interface. The RN-41 acts as a USB slave (not a USB host).
The key advantage of HCI mode is that it allows customers to run custom profiles on their processor. It also provides fast data rates (up to 3 Mbps).
HID mode: Roving now offers HID device profile support for the RN-41/42. It allows customers to create HID devices such as keyboards, mouse, pointing devices, etc.
