2015/3/26 1:54:19
Source: Web
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Fifty odd years
ago, when Frank Sinatra sang, "It's a blue world without you" he was
sad, not being able to connect with his lady love. Times change. Today an indigo
hue signals a swift, cheap, wireless connection to everything around us. It's
called Bluetooth and is slated to become the biggest technology this year for
the connecting the aam aadmi to home devices, even while challenging
Wi-Fi.
Just 12 years
ago, pundits had written off Bluetooth. In a case of famous last words that
come back to haunt you, a writer in Electrical Engineering Times wrote a savage
obituary: "Bluetooth is dead. Bluetooth is toast. Finished! Over! Stick a
fork in it. It's done." It was time to move on to Wi-Fi, he added.
What's the scene
today? Bluetooth is alive and kicking. Wi-Fi requires a separate router -- and
you have to pay a monthly broadband subscription for the basic Net connection.
Bluetooth works over shorter distances -- but it's almost as fast and it
self-installs for free between two or more devices including every phone system
-- Android, iOS, Blackberry, Linux and Windows. Which is why Bluetooth
continues to challenge Wi-Fi in many use scenarios in the home.
Nowhere more than
under the hood of loud speakers. Bluetooth has untethered our music, letting us
stream it through speaker systems which can be wirelessly latched to multiple
sources -- PC, mobile phone, MP3 music player -- which are safe and out of the
way of over enthusiastic pets or party guests (see 2 recent speakers launched
in India, in separate item)
Bluetooth will
soon make babycare easier. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in
January, a US based company launched TempTraq a tiny
Bluetooth-enabled patch and the first 24-hour intelligent thermometer that
continuously senses, records, and sends alerts of a child’s temperature to your
mobile device. In the UK, Blue Maestro has embedded a thermometer strip into a
Bluetooth-enabled baby pacifier or plastic teat called Pacifi. The
temperature is sent to a smart phone and parents when a limit is crossed.
Expect to find these products online in India as well by year end.
Also expected to
be available here in sports outlets is a new generation of phone-controlled
bicycle locks. One of the cleverest is Utah-based Fuz Design's Nokē U-Lock ( no-key, see!), a sturdy
Bluetooth-enabled $99 lock which recognizes the owner's mobile phone and unlocks
automatically as the phone is detected nearby. The owner can also empower
others to open the lock by authorising their phones. If anyone else tries to
open the lock or steal the bike, the lock lets out a loud alarm.
Most of these
Bluetooth applications have been made possible by a new iteration of Bluetooth
technology, called Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth Low Energy which works
comfortably over 10 metres at a fraction of the power required earlier.
Much of the
design of the chips, used by industry to create new low Bluetooth Smart
applications, was done in India in the labs of CSR, the Cambridge (UK)-based
company that created the world's first single chip Bluetooth device in 2000.
CSR is now part of Qualcomm
In another first
for an Indian company, in December 2014, Bangalore-based Mindtree became
the world's first qualified provider of Intellectual Property for the
latest Bluetooth Smart version 4.2, enabling thousands of developers
of wearables, smart home devices, connected medical devices and smart
location tracking to quickly get their products to market.
Presiding over
the global outreach of this cool wireless tool is the Bluetooth Special
Interest Group (SIG) which encourages and rewards innovation with the annual
Bluetooth Breakthrough Awards. Based on this year's winners, announced on March
2, we can soon hope to see some useful devices:
SmartMat, a sensor-laden
interactive yoga mat that gives you feedback on your phone, if your asanas are
not correct or if you are tiring.
Whiteboard meets
21st century with SMARTk app which leverages Bluetooth Smart
technology to digitally capture, save, and share content from a dry-erase board
with any PC and mobile device.
SafeWander—a wearable
sensor that alerts caregivers on their smartphones when Alzheimer's patients
wander. The patient wears the sensor on the foot or in a sock. Once the foot
hits the floor, the sensor detects an increase in pressure caused by body
weight and sends an alert via Bluetooth to the caregiver’s smartphone.
In these and
other ways wireless technology is poised to connect us to a plethora of
people-friendly devices which will make you say: Blues, what blues, when I've
got Bluetooth?
(Credit: Web)