Penny:
“How are flower berets gunna appeal to men?“ Howard: “We add Bluetooth”
Sheldon: “Brilliant. Men love Bluetooth.” Penny: “Wait a minute, wait a minute.
You wanna make a hair beret with Bluetooth?” Sheldon: “Penny. Everything is
better with Bluetooth!”. Sheldon from Big
Bang Theory was right – everything is better with Bluetooth but what
exactly is Bluetooth and what are some of the applications of the technology.
Let
me start off by saying Bluetooth is different to Wi-Fi (or as I hear many
people cringingly call it – Wifier) although both transmit data between
devices. They are complementary and will often exist side by side. For example,
your mobile phone may be connected to your home Wi-Fi network for your Internet
connection to then stream music to your phone but you may use Bluetooth to
connect your headset to listen to that music. Wi-Fi can be thought of as a
central point to connect many devices at high-speed over longer distances
whereas Bluetooth can be thought of as connecting two paired devices for
low-power and low-speed communications over short distances. In the example I
gave, you may walk around your house with the Wi-Fi reaching your phone across
the entire house and you may have many other devices connected as well but your
paired Bluetooth phone and headset are both carried with you so they stay
relatively close to each other.
Bluetooth’s
history goes back to 1995 when two Ericsson Mobile Communications employees,
Sven Mattison and Jaap Haartsen, were working on a project called MC Links
which was designed to replace cables to allow mobile phones to communicate with
each other. The technology was officially launched in 1998 by the Bluetooth
Special Interest Group which consisted of five companies – Ericsson; Intel;
Nokia; Toshiba and IBM. It is at this point that I started to wonder how these
technology giants arrived at the name of Bluetooth. Presumably a marketing team
was tasked with the role of creating a name and focus groups were engaged to
test the suitability of various proposed names.
As
with many common items we see in society, the best ideas are often very simple.
Harald Blåtand (anglicised as Bluetooth) was king of Denmark from 940 to 986. When
Intel started working on the MC Links project, Jim Kardach was the Intel
representative and Mattison gave Kardach a book on the Viking king. Kardach was
fascinated and suggested the name Bluetooth as the king had successfully joined
two Scandinavian kingdoms in the same way MC Links was aiming to join
telecommunications and computing. The name stuck and was officially adopted and
the logo is the representation of the initials of the Viking king.
Now
the technology had a sexy name, the specifications started to be ratified – the
Bluetooth 1.0 specification was released in 1999 – and products started to hit
the market. My youngest daughter tells the joke: “What was more important than
the invention of the first telephone? The second one.” And so it was with
Bluetooth. A single line of products was of no use unless they had other
products they could communicate with. In 2000 the first Bluetooth headset and
phone were both released. In quick succession we saw the range of Bluetooth
products expanded to include mice; keyboards; notebooks; printers; cameras;
health products; MP3 players and more. The specifications have continued to
evolve and most products on the market today are using the Bluetooth 3.0 or 4.0
standard and the specification for Bluetooth 5 was officially released in June
this year.
Typically,
Bluetooth products have a transfer speed of 25Mbps and a range of around 10m –
both of these may sound limiting – but it is the low power of Bluetooth that
makes it incredibly attractive. Humans are incredibly inventive and there are
fascinating products being released to the market now using this technology.
Now
that you have the lowdown on the technology, what are some of ‘practical’ uses
that we see in products available today. Most people are familiar with the
Bluetooth connection between their phone and their car or a headset – and audio
is still the most popular use of Bluetooth – but consider some other uses.
Chester Gould was incredibly futuristic when he gave his cartoon
character, Dick Tracy, a radio wristwatch in 1946 as watches available today
allow you to connect your watch to your phone to perform most of the functions
of your phone. Keen golfers can even look at their watch to see how far it is
to the pin! The link between your phone and watch is Bluetooth. If you want to
feel like a mechanic in Nico Rosberg’s team, you can purchase an engine
monitoring device for most modern cars that will give you real-time information
on the performance of your car with the information delivered via Bluetooth to
your phone. Many companies are now releasing padlocks and deadbolts that give
you the flexibility to open locks from your phone. This gives you additional
abilities to allow limited access to certain people or allows one phone to open
multiple locks to save carrying keys for a variety of locks. The information is
transmitted from your phone to the lock via Bluetooth. Bluetooth tracking
devices allow you to keep track of your keys or wallet or any device that you
may misplace (children perhaps) and product buttons are being produced that
will allow you to order at the click of a button. For example, a laundry powder
manufacturer might give you a button that will allow you to click when your
powder is low and an automatic shipment will be generated. You can add in
helmet concussion sensors (after tangling with a kangaroo while on my bike
recently I like the idea of this); autonomous suitcases; pet tracking collars; garment
activity sensors; running shoes…the list goes on. All of these devices use
Bluetooth.
I
am sure devices that we have not even thought of yet will be essential items in
only a few short years. I am not convinced they will include a hair beret but
in this Bluetooth enabled world we live in, who knows!
Mathew Dickerson