On the XBee device, the Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) protocol is disabled by default, so the first thing to do if you want to work with the BLE interface is to enable it, and then to configure the authentication password. Follow these steps to do so:

  1. Launch XBee Studio. The device browser appears.

  2. Plug your device to the PC. This triggers the automatic discovery process. The device appears once discovered.

  3. Click on the device to open its device tab. The tab shows the Dashboard page.

  4. Click on the Bluetooth Configuration quick action. The quick action popup appears.

  5. Check the Enable Bluetooth Low Energy Interface checkbox. The content below is enabled.

  6. Set the Identifier, a new Password and select the Advertisement power level according to your needs.

  7. Click Apply to save the configuration.

Once the BLE interface is enabled, the XBee device starts a GATT service with two characteristics to communicate with it via BLE. The libraries included with the Digi IoT Mobile SDK contain a set of methods that abstract the internals of the BLE communication, so you do not need to worry about writing or reading from characteristics.

For more information about the services and characteristics exposed by the GATT server, see the XBee API BLE Service page of your XBee device’s documentation.

Now you are ready to start communicating securely with the XBee device.