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Bluetooth Evolution Conference (5) : The Internet Of Things
November 02, 2007
More on Ultra Low Power Bluetooth (formerly WiBree). Nick Hunn of EZURiO gave an excellent talk as part of yeaterday's Ultra Low Power panel session in the afternoon. One of the really striking points he made is about the latent opportunity in connecting "stuff" that hasn't traditionally been connected before. This is sometimes drily referred to as "M2M" or Machine-to-Machine applications, but is better described as "the internet of things".
It's sometimes difficult to convey certain idea, but I think his slide showing (for comparison), how few of our "machines" (washing machine, fridge, car, hoover, toilet, scales, industrial, ...) are currently connected to anything, and how numerous they are. I asked him could I re-use his slide here, and he kindly gave me permission:
Comments
Nick Hunn's perspective is nothing new if you have been in the M2M industry. But his over-enthusiasm that Wibree can achieve this ambition is completely bullshit and over-simplified the technical challenges. ULP has some sense on cell phone centric apps (because it will be in every phone), but beyond that it hardly can solve real problems due to its limited capability (7 nodes star network). This is why a few guys claimed that preprietary solutions will not go away during the conference.
You may want to review the slides from guys of Nordic Semi and TI.