Bluetooth Police Beacon

At some point of time, haven’t we been really fascinated with the police beacon on the cars? I have!

This DIY lets you make a mini rotating police beacon which you can handle from you smartphone using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). But before you get one for yourself, it just might be illegal to do it. But it does let you learn a lot, like driving a load, using a MOSFET, converting a 5V power supply to 3.3V, creating and Arduino app and other things.

For this project, you need, a mini USB police beacon, LightBlue Bean, a few wires and resistors and a BEL enabled smartphone. For exact specification, check out the source link. You can get the schematic diagram of how to make the connections and switch the load. Mount all the electronic components as shown in the link below and get the Arduino program up and running. You can get the Arduino Sketch from the Github link and program it on a Bean. If it’s your first time at it, you can go through the detailed instruction set.

Now, if you’re using an Android phone then you’ll need to write a small app code for it. iOS users, good news, there’s already an app for you guys!

Also, you can put the beacon to other uses, like the author mentioned. Head over to the blog and have a good day.