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Just jumped into the ocean of IoT and found myself drowning....

I am trying to make my small toy car(with remote) being able to follow me.

Have discussed with my hardware friend and was told to get

  1. UWB to detecting the distance
  2. Bluetooth 5.1 for directional positioning

However when I searched online, I found so many variations for the Bluetooth 5.1. (It has to be at least BLE 5.1 to be able to do the directional positioning)

The one BLE I provided link here with title BLE 5.1, but then also having picture saying it supports Bluetooth 5.0 which makes me confuse about which exactly version it supports. Talked to the store staff, no responses.....

Can someone suggest a few products for the Bluetooth?

Also , could someone share some code for how to use them in Python or MicroPython, if no code available in Python, C++ is okay...

Update 1

Hi guys,

An interesting found, a few days ago, I was trying to pointing my 5G router to the direction of 5G signal tower. After made a call to my mobile phone service provider, I installed an My Account app.

By using this app, I am able to find the correct direction for my 5G router to point to. Here is how it looks like:

enter image description here

As you can see that the pointer in the middle of the screen rotates when I rotate my mobile phone.

Isn't this the exactly functionality I am looking for?

Does anyone know how it is achieved? Could this be the gyro sensor???

I can't figure out why I had been ignoring gyro sensor the whole time, but it looks like the device I'm looking for, right?

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    hi @jcaron after reading at least 5 articles each for UWB and BLE 5.1, I found that yes UWB will be capable of doing directional finding, BUT we need at least 3 or 4 UWB used as anchors and 1 UWB used as tag to do so. As to BLE, it only became capable of doing directional finding after version 5.1.
    – Franva
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 11:29
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    graz.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/…
    – jcaron
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 12:22
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    @MawgsaysreinstateMonica How about this one? (aliexpress.com/item/…) I have ordered 2 today. We can even pair up to try to learn how to use it.
    – Franva
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 13:23
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    @MawgsaysreinstateMonica the chip is capable of performing direction finding, but you need a switched antenna array to go with it, which I doubt the module has. Also this specific module seems to be designed solely to act as a serial/BLE bridge, though you may be able to reprogram the 52811 with other firmware.
    – jcaron
    Commented Aug 4, 2021 at 11:25
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    @MawgsaysreinstateMonica yep, I am confused too. The title says one thing, the content says other thing~! I will have to wait to my parcel and hopefully it works. Meanwhile, I will try to find some example codes.
    – Franva
    Commented Aug 4, 2021 at 13:51

1 Answer 1

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With direction-finding, you usually need a bunch of coordinating devices working together to estimate direction. Look at Silabs white paper for Bluetooth 5.1 AoA and AoD. I don't think this tech is ready for a hobbyist just yet. But, if you've got experience with development kits, then go for it. Silabs has a BG22 module that you could look at.

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  • Hi Matthew, yes I saw that as well. Could you please have a look my update 1?
    – Franva
    Commented Aug 11, 2021 at 11:11
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    Hey Franva. Yeah gyros are cool and can work but you’ll have to calibrate them every now and then. Gyros suffer from drift like all dead-wreckoning systems. After some time, the direction estimate will get worse and worse. You’ll have to have another system to periodically realign the direction correctly.
    – Matthew Trotter
    Commented Aug 11, 2021 at 12:49
  • Hi @Matthew, I am thinking may I make it unnecessary complicated? If you read my Update 1, you would see that my phone Oppo Find X2 Pro, does not have UWB, yet it is still able to find the direction pointing to the 5G signal station. How does it do it???
    – Franva
    Commented Sep 12, 2021 at 0:56
  • thanks @matthew, then I guess I can conclude that for now, technically it is possible, but practically it's not that easy.
    – Franva
    Commented Sep 13, 2021 at 12:22

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