Introduction

When you first power up the NXT (by pressing the square orange button) you will be greeted by a display that looks like this:

USB Console
BT  Console





xxxxx Button: 0

The xxxxx will be a quickly changing number that represents the current value of ISRTicks - the value that is incremented every millisecond. The number beside Button: is the value of the currently pressed button, and 0 if no button is pressed. I added these to the startup display to help with some debugging and never removed them.

Pressing the dark grey rectanular button will "cycle" between the USB and BT console choices. The line with the dark background and light text is the currently selected console.

When you have the BT Console highlighted, the display changes to something like this:

USB Console
BT  Console

Name of BT Device
AD:0123456789AB
CL:ABCDEF
ST:02
BTDevIdx: 00
xxxxx Button: 0

The additional fields tell you something about the Bluetooth devices your NXT knows about. In case it's not terribly obvious, AD is the 12 byte address of the device, CL is the 6 Byte Class definition of the device, and ST is the internal firmware's idea of the status of the device.

Now comes the interesting part. By pressing the left and right arrow buttons when the BT console is selected, you can cycle through up to 30 pre-stored Bluetooth devices to pick the one you want to connect to.

Note that you must connect to the USB console the first time you want to set up Bluetooth networking. This will be described on another page that I'll provide a link to later.

So, for now, just highlight the USB console, and connect to it by pressing the oranage button briefly. You'll see that the USB connection happens just as before!

If you want to turn off the NXT, just press and hold the orange button for at least three seconds, you'll see a horizontal line on the LCD as the device powers off, just like on an old school TV!

If you continue to press the orange button, the NXT will power up again. So stop holding the button for so long!