Bluetooth POP3 Relay Project

Benjamin Kennedy

April 30th, 2002

Outline

• Goals of the project• Possible hardware approaches• Possible software approaches• Methodology• Results

Goals of the Project

• Create a working Bluetooth application

• Participate in an educational engineering design problem

Bluetooth

• Short range wireless technology• Data rate of 1Mbps• Designed for mass market portable

devices– Low Power

– Low Cost

Bluetooth, cont.

• Made up of:– Master

– Slave

• A master can have multiple slaves

Bluetooth, cont.

• A device can take on multiple roles

Possible Hardware Approaches

• Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)– Palm OS– Microsoft Pocket PC

• Mobile Phone– Ericsson– Nokia

• PC– Microsoft Windows– Linux– Macintosh OSX

Chosen Hardware Approach

• PC was used– Connection

• USB Port

– Operating System• Windows 2000

– Development Program• DevStudio

Possible Software Approaches

• Internet Relay– Web browser

– Telnet

• Specific Data Transfer– FTP

– Synchronization

• Voice over Bluetooth– Headsets

Chosen Software Approach

• Internet Relay– Mail reader

Mail ClientRelay Point

Mail Serv erBluetoothwireless

communication

Internet

Hardware Design

• Used “off the shelf” components

Computer Bluetooth Dev iceUSB Port

Software Design• Mail server connection• PC to PC communication• Wireless client user interface

Mail clientapplication

BluetoothAPI

BluetoothAPI

WindowsEv ent Queue

Mail RelayApplication

POP3Serv er

ApplicationInternet

BluetoothUSB Driv er

BluetoothUSB Driv er

Mail Server Connection

• Post Office Protocol, or POP• Can test by typing in:

– telnet pop.eecs.tufts.edu 110

Mail Server Connection, cont.

• Developed a class to– Open a connection and send login information– Get the number and size of messages– Read a specific message

PC to Bluetooth communication

• API takes care of most parts– Call API function to send data– API causes a Windows event to recognize that

it received data

• Wrote functions to receive and process data

PC to PC Communication

• Developed a protocol for communication between the PC’s

• One computer sends data/request, other responds with data or acknowledgement

PC to PC Communication, cont.• Example of a message request

BODY_REQUEST + Message Number

MESSAGE_BODY_LINE + 1st Line

MESSAGE_BODY_LINE + 2nd Line

MESSAGE_BODY_LINE + Last Line

.

.

.

SENT_BODY

WirelessClient

InternetRelay

Client User Interface

Problems Encountered

• Bluetooth devices were unreliable– Lost communication with each other– Powered down automatically

• API was poorly documented– Could not get deep into inner workings

• Yahoo! shut down POP services– Need to find new POP provider

Conclusions

• Project was successful– Built application that utilized Bluetooth– Developed message passing and handshaking

protocol– Implemented current Internet Protocol