Human Interface Device Profile (HID)

The HID profile defines the protocols, procedures and features to be used by Bluetooth HID such as keyboards, pointing devices, gaming devices and remote monitoring devices.

Usage Scenarios

The most common usage would be your wireless desktop, keyboard, mouse, etc.

Example Products

Here are a few examples of the types of devices that you might find using the HID Profile:

• Keyboard
  
• Mouse
• Cordless Presenter
• Gaming Devices
• Tablet
• PC
• Laptop
• Mobile Phone
• PDA

Getting Technical

The HID defines two roles, that of a Human Interface Device (HID) and a Host:

• Human Interface Device (HID) – The device providing the service of human data input and output to and from the host.
• Host – The device using or requesting the services of a Human Interface Device.

The HID profile uses the universal serial bus (USB) definition of a HID device in order to leverage the existing class drivers for USB HID devices. The HID profile describes how to use the USB HID protocol to discover a HID class device’s feature set and how a Bluetoothenabled device can support HID services using the L2CAP layer. The HID profile is designed to enable initialization and control self-describing devices as well as provide a low latency link with low power requirements.

The Bluetooth HID profile is built upon the Generic Access Profile (GAP), specified in the BluetoothProfiles Document; see Referenced Documents. In order to provide the simplest possible implementation, the HID protocol runs natively on L2CAP and does not reuse Bluetooth protocols other than the Service Discovery Protocol. To the left is an illustration of the software layers that reside in both the host and the human interface device for an example implementation. In this example, the host is a personal computer and has the upper layers of the Bluetooth software running on its native processor and is connected to a Bluetoothradio module via a transport bus such as USB. The HID in this example has its firmware embedded with the radio firmware, running on the same CPU, for the lowest possible cost implementation. Other implementations on the HID side are possible and equally valid.