How USB to Bluetooth DTR/RTS work?

Question

A number of bluetooth Arduino shields (Bluefruit EZ-link, SparkFun Bluetooth Silver) support DTR/RTS and have special out pin to wire. How do they work? Does it require special drivers (linux f.e.)? Can any bluetooth receiver be used or modified to provide DTR/RTS? Since setting DTR/RTS is vendor-specific does it depend on transmitter side or receiver (bluetooth shield) only?

The only idea is that special USB drivers needed that send special AT commands to make BT receiver know actual DTR/RTS value.

Answer 1

The documentation of Bluetooth SPP (https://developer.bluetooth.org/TechnologyOverview/Documents/SPP_SPEC.pdf) states in section 4.1 RS232 Control Signals that "all devices are required to send information on all changes in RS232 control signals".

And since Bluefruit EZ-link is not using any special drivers on the side of the computer, it must be that the standard BT virtual serial port drivers that manage the ports created for the BT connection to Arduino handle the control signals properly and send them over to the BT shield connected to Arduino. Hence no work should be needed on the side of the computer, and it only depends on the receiver: whether it has the control signals accessible on any of the output pins and operates them as it should, or not (as usually is the case, unfortunately).