Bluetooth low energy – Page 4 – Creative Connectivity

Bluetooth low energy – aiming for the trillions

Today the Bluetooth SIG formally adopted the full specification for Bluetooth low energy and made it available for public download. It’s exciting – they’re firing the starting pistol for a new ecosystem of innovative products and applications that will change the way we think about the things around us.

Bluetooth low energy is not just a variant of the existing Bluetooth specification – it’s an entirely new standard that’s been optimised for low power and internet connectivity. It marks a step change in short range wireless, providing a new short range connection for a new decade.

Hacking Smart Meters, Single Chips and Updating

This week was an interesting one for smart metering announcements. Accent – a Franco-Italian semiconductor design house announced their smart meter on a chip, prompting Jesse Berst of Smart Grid News to enthuse that the “Smart Metering Business has just changed for ever“. Sorry Jesse, but I don’t think so. Elsewhere, in Providence, Rhode Island, New England hackers were convening at QuahogCon to discuss the security of standards. The two announcements provided a good demonstration of the gulf between the promoters of smart metering and the reality of the state of the standards they intend to use. In the same week, ZigBee closed its call for comments on the Technical requirements Document for its Smart Energy Profile, giving the impression that the standard is not far from completion.

The gulf between the enthusiasts and realists is wide. It is worrying that much of the industry is rushing blindly towards deployment, with little understanding of the risks and what can be done to mitigate them.

One of key mantras I keep on hearing repeated when security of the smart meter is raised is “why would anyone bother to hack it?” Josh Wright, talking about ZigBee security at QuahogCon hit the nail on the head when he answered that. “As an attacker, ZigBee lets me interact with the real world – that’s exciting. I can interact with a dam, or natural gas distribution lines. We’re looking at a wireless protocol that lets us interact with real things in the real world – it’s not just credit cards.” The industry forgets the excitement that comes from “because I can” and “real things” And it only needs a few people doing that to fuel scare stories that will kill the whole industry.

Full Bluetooth low energy standard published

This week, at the Bluetooth annual All Hands Meeting in Seattle, the final draft of the new Bluetooth low energy specification was made available. Last December, the core specification for the low energy radio was adopted, allowing silicon vendors to start their production process, so that chips would be available as soon as the rest of the specification is adopted. This week’s release allows software and application developers to begin work on designing the new ecosystem of products that will be use Bluetooth low energy.

Outside the confines of the technical working groups, Bluetooth low energy is still a fairly well kept secret. Yet it has the potential to overtake Bluetooth usage in just a few years, growing to a volume of multiple billions of chips per year. It is the only wireless technology that has the potential to challenge and surpass the shipment volumes of cellular. Yet even within the Bluetooth community, there are many that have not yet understood this potential.

One of the reasons for that lack of understanding is that Bluetooth low energy is a wireless standard for a new generation of applications. Every previous wireless standard comes from the mindset of being a cable replacement which connects devices that never change their behaviour. That is true even if there’s a mesh involved. And it’s the way that most products were designed until a year or two ago.

Two things have changed that. The first is the concept of machine-to-machine communications where products connect directly to the Internet. The second is the emergence of the Apps store, where handset owners can download and install new features every day. Bluetooth low energy has a new architecture that fits both of these models. Even more importantly, it allows them to converge. As such, it is the first wireless technology designed for the second decade of this century. Here’s why…

Smart Energy & Strange Alliances

It’s been an odd month for Smart Energy, or at least for the wireless standards that are tackling connectivity around the home. If you were to go back six months, then, at least in the U.S., the general consensus would have been that ZigBee had the market tied up. It had the only profile with “Smart Energy” in its name and was winning the PR battle hands down.

Within the major working groups, things weren’t quite so clear. NIST, which has been trying to herd the wireless cats into some semblance of order started a more thorough analysis of just what existed, which saw an increased emphasis on other members of the IEEE 802 standards family, bolstering the fortunes of Wi-Fi (in its 802.11 incarnation) and Bluetooth (in its 802.15.1-2005 form). And it made its preferences clear about a need for IP support. But the status quo didn’t seem to shift very much as a result.

Then, last month, Bluetooth emerged from its normal mode of PR silence to announce the formation of a Smart Energy Study Group. The fact that Emerson, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of home HVAC devices was one of the sponsors for the group caused some noticeable shivers in the Smart Energy marketplace.

This week, there were more ripples, when Wi-Fi and ZigBee announced their Alliance of Alliances to jointly provide an in-home solution for Smart Energy. The Twitterati thought it significant, but what was behind it? Is it deadly rivals joining forces against a common enemy, or is there more going on?

Fast, Fit and Fertile. Bluetooth low energy spurs innovation.

The potential of Bluetooth low energy was eloquently demonstrated at this week’s ISPOO conference in Germany, when the winners of the first year of the Bluetooth Innovation World Cup awards were announced. The competition has been running for the last year, inviting individuals and companies to submit ideas for new sports and fitness products that will be made possible by the new Bluetooth low energy standard.

mHealth – Mobile Monday Amsterdam (Part 1)

Watch the Video | See the Slides

The organisers probably weren’t expecting snow, but it didn’t stop the audience turning up en masse to Mobile Monday’s mHealth meeting in Amsterdam last week. The presentations were far from chilling; mHealth is moving from a position of relative obscurity a year ago, to something that every network operator feels they need to have. Vodafone, AT&T and Telefonica have already declared that it’s a key part of their strategy. The potentially still-born US health reform and accompanying monetary stimulus plans have convinced many more that there’s money to be made from it, and 400 plus attendees were keen to understand where those opportunities may be.