Where can I find drivers for the BT820 USB dongle?

Answer

The BT820 is a packaged USB dongle version of the BT800 module that provides Bluetooth hardware only support for both classic Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The BT820 presents a standard Bluetooth HCI interface and requires that the Bluetooth software stack resides on the host operating system that the USB device is plugged into. The BT820 can be used with any Windows, MAC, or Linux device that has a Bluetooth software stack on board – Laird does not provide the Bluetooth software stack. In Windows XP Service Pack 2 onwards, the BT820 should be automatically detected by the operating system when plugged in and will automatically install.

Please be advised that Win 7 devices do not natively support BLE, causing the BT820 to act as a classic BT radio. In these implementations, any inbuilt classic BT hardware must be disabled to avoid conflicts. Windows 8 devices do natively support BLE, with Win 8.1 being the best option; again any inbuilt Bluetooth hardware need to be disabled first.