Over the past few months, the NFC library has seen tremendous progress. Now, the next major release is here: the new 3.0.1 version is now available for download and adds Blueooth, Connection Handover and Windows Phone 8.1 / Universal Apps support!
Especially Bluetooth support has been on the wish-list of many users for a long time. It was a challenge to implement, and comparing the file size of the code reveals that the additions are nearly as large as the code of all previously available classes combined! The new version now supports several additions, based on the latest standards:
- Bluetooth Secure Simple Pairing: based on the “Bluetooth Secure Simple Pairing Using NFC” Application Document of the NFC Forum, as well as the latest Bluetooth Core 4.1 specification by the Bluetooth SIG. NDEF records created based on this class are sufficient to do a connection handover: tap an NFC tag and connect to any Bluetooth device! The record can provide a multitude of information to the reading device, such as the service class, major and minor device class, name of the device and much more.
- Connection Handover: based on the according technical specification version 1.3 by the NFC Forum. In most loudspeakers, the Handover Select record is the first on the NFC tag. In its payload, the record defines that a connection handover to Bluetooth is possible, which is further specified by the Alternative Carrier record contained within. The new classes to enable this use case include:
- Handover Select
- Handover Alternative Carrier
- Handover Error
In addition, the library package definition has been updated to include full support for Windows Phone 8.1 and Universal apps, so that you can continue using the library directly from the NuGet package and without having to download the source code.
You can get the source code plus the demo app from the library homepage on Codeplex. Alternatively, you can directly integrate the library into your project through NuGet – make sure you enable the setting “Include Prerelease” to install the latest version 3.0!
The development of the NFC / NDEF library is supported by Netidee
