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iOS 7 iBeacons: An unsung feature with immense promise
While the world is getting up to speed on iOS 7's more visible features like Control Center and the dazzling parallax effects, there's one feature that hasn't gotten a lot of attention -- iBeacons. TidBITS author Michael Cohen wrote a great piece this week that talks about the feature and what it can do for iOS device owners in the future. iBeacons was just a word on a slide at WWDC 2013, but as Cohen points out, it has the potential to provide some amazing functionality. To quote Cohen, "Apps can use iBeacons to answer the question 'Where am I?' not in terms of a location on a map, like GPS does, but in terms of where the device is relative to another device. Specifically, where it is relative to another device acting as an iBeacon." An iBeacon is a radio that can be placed anywhere, and when an iOS device gets near it, it can estimate how far apart the device and iBeacon are. Any iPhone 4S or later, and any third-generation iPad or later, has the ability to be an iBeacon through the use of Bluetooth 4.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). As Cohen explains it, BLE devices are battery-friendly and can run for weeks without recharging. So how could they be used? Well, a store could set up iBeacons in each department or aisle, so you could use a store directory app and get in-store directions to something you're looking for (are you listening, Home Depot?). Museums could offer tour apps, and Cohen even imagines a future version of Find My iPhone that would work inside a house, finding that iPhone that slipped between couch cushions. Third-party standalone iBeacon devices will start at about US$100 each, and Cohen posits that the price may drop quickly and significantly due to the popularity of iOS. Right now, there's really nothing that takes advantage of iBeacons, but this is a capability of iOS 7 that is just waiting for the right app to come along.
iOS-integrated BTLE Wimoto 'motes' offer mobile-ready sensor utility
Here are some cool little devices! Wimoto Motes are tiny sensors, just about an inch to a side, that monitor the environment and broadcast information using iOS-ready Bluetooth Low Energy. Ranging from moisture, temperature and humidity sensing to infrared and motion triggers, the Motes offer low-maintenance, long-lived sensor technology. They grew out of a homebrew project that enabled developer Marc Nicholas to monitor his home air conditioner and keep track of when his tomatoes needed watering. Motes can do a lot more now. There's a scientist who uses one to monitor the humidity in his laser lab -- ensuring that ambient moisture in the air won't affect his experimental results. There's another lady in New Zealand who runs a Bikram yoga studio -- which must be kept at exactly 40 degrees C and 40 percent humidity at all times. If not, she receives alerts on her iPhone. Other users have set up baby monitoring and room-by-room temperature checks. There are even users who are adding motes to their smart-farming efforts. By tracking climate on a very localized scale, they can tailor crop selection. Nicholas tells TUAW, "Some cultivars of rice will only flower at night in a 2C range of temperatures -- they're using [motes] data to make sure farmers' crops don't fail." The Bluetooth Low Energy implementation means the devices run on long-lived coin batteries, using a well-defined communication protocol. The devices are rugged, small and unobtrusive. The Motes are currently participating in a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Units include the "climote," which monitors light, humidity and temperature and the "growmote," which keeps track of sunlight, soil temperature and moisture. The "thermote" provides object temperature feedback, and the "securimote" is triggered by infrared motion and acceleration. Want to learn more? Here's the Motes project promo video:
Button TrackR extends Indiegogo campaign: never leave your coat or keys behind again
Way back in November, TUAW first covered the Wallet TrackR campaign on Indiegogo. That initial campaign offered a device that could be slipped into your wallet or jacket, and that used Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to ensure long battery life and easy iOS integration. Originally scheduled to ship in April, units are just now getting ready for delivery. CEO Chris Herbert tells TUAW that the delay was unavoidable and frustrating. The first samples Phone Halo received from the manufacturer did not pass their quality assurance standards, so the company had to go a few more rounds before they could begin their mass production run. The units are currently in shipment from China and should be sent out to the original purchasers by the end of the month. Even as they were working to fulfill their initial crowd funding effort, their second foray into personal item tracking was well underway. Their new product Button TrackR streamlines Bluetooth Low Energy tracking even further. Units are smaller, use just one battery, and are (frankly) better looking and more portable. Button TrackR was built using the same technology that powered Wallet TrackR but this second generation uses miniaturized circuitry that enabled Phone Halo to fit it into a much smaller form factor. Customer feedback helped drive a fundamental redesign that makes it easier to stick the unit onto things -- such as remote controls. It ships with 3M double-sided semi-permanent sticky tape in the package. A new attachment hole enables you to attach a loop (also provided in the package) to connect the TrackR to your keychain or even to bracelets to put on your kids and pets. When I first tested the Wallet version of the device back in November, my family fell in love with it. Its beep-to-locate feature means you can find your keys even if they fall into cracks in the couch (and yes, my kids pushed items down there just to make sure during testing). Even better than that, you can set up the software to alert you if you walk away from items that have been left behind -- this was a godsend for items like coats at restaurants, specifically items you don't normally hold in your pocket or backpack. The Bluetooth LE feature means this functionality works even if the Phone Halo app is running directly in the foreground, and best of all, it's super energy efficient, so you won't kill your batteries if you use this tech. Now with Button TrackR, a new crowd-sourcing recovery system plays an even bigger role. Although your phone remembers the last-tracked location of your lost item, many customers want to find items that have gone out of range from their phones. The challenge is getting the lost item in touch with devices that could help send its location back to you. "So we thought, what if other people could help you find your lost stuff for you," Chris Herbert explained. "What we did is update the software so that a lost device starts broadcasting a pre-registered unique ID stored in a cloud database. When other people with our app move near the tracker, the Bluetooth LE on their device can pick up that broadcast and will send those GPS coordinates to our company." The Phone Halo system associates that device ID and coordinates with your account, and sends the location data to you. "This provides an almost live GPS tracking stream for all your lost items without a subscription like other device providers might charge," said Herbert. Worried about privacy? The "call home" signal never activates so long as the device stays in contact with its primary phone. It only starts broadcasting after an hour. What's more, the Wallet TrackR owners who are helping you out will never know anything about your details, your device, or any location. That information is sent invisibly and encrypted for privacy. Want to pick up a device or ten for yourself? Head on over to Indiegogo and place your order. Originally established with a $15,000 goal, Button TrackR has now raised almost a quarter of a million dollars. The developers kindly extended the campaign to the end of the month specifically at TUAW's request. You can pick up a single tracker for $25, two for $40 or if you want to go crazy, the best value for most consumers is going to be 10 devices for $95. The units should ship in August, but given the company's insistence on high quality controls please allow a little extra time for them to get things exactly right.
RFLKT and Runmeter: It's basically Pebble for your bike
People love the idea of the Pebble watch. It's an iOS-compatible display that sits on your wrist, so your iPhone can stay in your backpack, purse, or pocket. It's a great way to keep light track of your notifications, and what's going on in your life. It is, however, not a particularly good match to bike riding, where constantly checking your watch for fine detail might end up with a bad case of road rash, small screaming children who you just hit as you checked your inbox, or even the less dramatic wobblewobbleohdear. For years, bikers have used small handle-bar mounted computer systems to keep track of their speed, cadence, heart rates, and distance -- among other OCD-friendly metrics. In the more recent past, vendors have produced iPhone mounts, so you can watch all this data directly as you bike. This also has several negative side effects. First, keeping the screen on and well lit kills your battery quicker than Steve Sande goes through nachos at a Rockies game. Second, when your bike goes down, your iPhone goes crash, and there are few insurance policies generous enough to cover the case of "Oh, I stuck my multi-hundred-dollar-phone onto my bike handlebars" with good humor. Enter the Wahoo RFLKT. It's a Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) display that mounts to your bike and keeps your iPhone out of the way. It offers a way for your favorite apps to keep you supplied with data while you ride. Tuck your phone in your sleeve, your back pocket, or your pannier, and you're ready to go. I assumed the RFLKT would blow my cheap Avenir bike system out of the water. Turns out the reality is much more nuanced. Let me start with the hardware. The RFLKT is about a quarter of the size of an iPhone 5, so it's about double or more the size of most bike computers. It can be mounted to stem or handlebars. It has a low-energy screen, runs off a coin battery and in theory can be removed from that mount every six months or so to change that battery. (In practice, I completely stripped the pop-out section and could not, for the life of me, get that darned thing off my bike. I basically ended up destroying the back, using the manufacturer-supplied metal pry bar.) I first ran the RFLKT using the free Wahoo-supplied app. In my preliminary outing, I quickly realized how much I wanted to go back to my standard exercise app of choice, Runmeter. That's because of several things. First, none of the output selections really appealed to me. I like to see current speed, max speed, elapsed time, current time and I couldn't get that on one screen. Second, the app kept making rookie mistakes -- and I knew they were rookie mistakes because I've written GPS apps. These are things that Abvio's Runmeter has long long since figured out and fixed. By rookie mistake, let me give you an example: max speed. When working with GPS, you often lose sync. The quality of the data you receive can vary all over the place, from accuracy within miles to within tens of meters. You have to keep this in mind as you calculate the current speed. When you bike, you earn your max speed. You "walk" that bike up the big hill using your granny gear and you soar down like an eagle. (In my case, that eagle is fat, slow, and middle aged, but it's still an eagle, damnit.) Your max speed should reflect that. With the Wahoo software, I was doing 43 MPH while trudging along on the flat. I may be a persistent cyclist, but I am not a good one and there's no way I live in Lance Armstrong territory, even in my most addled cold medicine dreams. While Wahoo was delivering the right hardware, it wasn't giving me what I needed in terms of software. The second I returned from my initial test ride, I started googling to see if I could use Runmeter with the hardware. Fortunately, I was within days of Runmeter's releasing their new RFLKT support. I contacted Abvio and they set me up with their latest version, complete with RFLKT integration. This is just a $4.99 in-app purchase for Runmeter Pro (which is what I use), Cyclemeter, and Walkmeter owners. I should warn you that Runmeter is clearly an app written by engineers instead of artists, but it's one that has served me well for years and one I'm wildly enthusiastic about. It does everything I need in terms of tracking my exercise. With RFLKT, it let me select one of about a dozen pre-designed templates and customize it to show exactly the statistics I wanted to see. Sure, the menus to do this tweaking were a bit antidiluvian, but if you're a tech geek to start off with, you shouldn't have too much trouble picking and customizing one of the choices shown here. I had to reset the RFLKT (there are instructions right inside the settings of Runmeter on how to do this), enable Bluetooth Sensors, and upload my custom screens. It wasn't particularly painful, although it did take some time to figure my way through the menus. Using a RFLKT display isn't exactly like using a bike computer. You gain some things, you lose others. Take speed for example. Because of the GPS sync problem, your Runmeter speed will always lag unless you use an external sensor. That means you can be flying down that mountain and still register 7.7 MPH for a while. For speed and distance measures to be accurate, they need a wider range of sampling time. Side by side, my Avenir bike computer knew my speed changes as they happened. I found myself referring to that much more often for MPH versus the RFLKT monitor. You can, however, integrate other sensors into the Runmeter/RFLKT experience to fix that. If the Runmeter app can integrate with the sensor (they have posted a list here), you can add it to the RFLKT display -- this includes digital speed and cadence from Garmin and Bontrager, negating any issues of GPS sampling. You can also add heart monitors, giving you some extra performance feedback. Regardless of speed, the distance portion of the solution was wicked accurate. There's no need to measure your tire or estimate its pressure and multiply the circumference to calculate how far you've gone. Need to go 3.7 miles? The RFLKT/Runmeter combination gets exactly that. It's brilliant. Other measures like date and time and max speed are also super-precise. I have no intention of buying new sensors so I found that I liked having both displays -- traditional and RFLKT on my bike, even though I had to sacrifice one of my night-riding lights to fit it there. I have small girlygirl handlebars, which don't offer a lot of real estate. I also had to pad the RFLKT with not one but THREE layers to get it to fit the bar and stay firmly mounted. Speaking of displays, I really do wish the RFLKT offered a lip the way my Avenir does, giving a little shade and offering glare protection. The RFLKT is pretty obviously a 1st gen device, and I expect it to evolve to be a little cleaner, and less boxy over time, but even as is, I really fell in love with it. On Monday, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Steve Kusmer of Abvio, the man behind Runmeter to talk about RFLKT, its technology and how the app has integrated itself with display. The relationship is longstanding. "Wahoo has provided the technology we've used for over two years to access Bluetooth devices. With the RFLKT, Wahoo provided the hardware, a wonderful design point, and we built from there. We've been demoing the RFLKT since September and just now released support in our software." The RFLKT took a lot of its design influence from the Palm Pilot. "It had to run on a simple battery and last forever. The RFLKT works with a coin cell battery, can be alive for months if not a year, and powers down on idle, when nothing is being used. Plus, it uses BTLE with minimal bandwidth. It has buttons and it's programmable. It's very simple but effective." Kusmer talked about integrating the device into riding. "Once I put the RFLKT on my bike, it becomes a different experience. It's providing a lot of value that enhances my experience." Making Runmeter work with the device helped leverage the app's underlying features. "We've been spent more than four years deployed -- started back in 2008, and we have spent a lot of time on the underlying data architecture for storing and displaying application data. It's very hard to do this right. One spike of data and your Max Speed is toast. We went through a year or more of iterations on trying to figure out the heuristic so bad GPS data doesn't whack your data. "We love RFLKT because we could take our data architecture and match up with anything you want to do on RFLKT. We can display 148 different statistics -- from your current speed to your previous interval average heart rate --- all readily accessible during your rides on the RFLKT." What you get in the end is a terrific combination of software (from Abvio) and hardware (from Wahoo) and one that I was really happy using. You can pick up a RFLKT for $130 at Wahoo. Runmeter is free with a $4.99 in-app upgrade to Pro, and another $4.99 in-app upgrade for RFLKT support. Cyclemeter and Walkmeter are $4.99 each.
Wallet TrackR may be the next great way to safeguard your wallet
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the overlooked heroes of iOS. Part of Bluetooth 4.0, it offers a low-power way to wirelessly connect sensors and other short-range devices to applications that can, with Apple's blessing, run in the background. That means, your phone can track and monitor systems without you having to keep an application open full-time and it won't run down your battery. Still an emerging technology, lots of BLE projects are just ramping up. I recently had a chance to try out a prototype of Phone Halo's Wallet TrackR system. Small enough to fit in your wallet, the Wallet TrackR uses BLE to virtually tether valuables to your iPhone. It works like this. You slide the TrackR into your wallet or connect it to your keychain. Once paired with your phone, a background process connects to the unit and makes sure that it stays close. Should you move too far away, your phone alerts you -- and shows you the TrackR's last known location on a map. You won't have to worry about getting up from the table at that restaurant and accidentally leaving your wallet behind. %Gallery-171414% That's not all the TrackR does. Its press-to-find system lets you activate an audio alert, so you can find items that have slid down between cushions. A "cold and hot" indicator tells you how physically close you are to the device. So how does it work in the real world? Keeping in mind that I only had a chance to test a prototype, pretty well. The final unit will be quite flat, about 3.8 mm thick. The design is based around two CR2016 batteries, the CR2032's flatter little brother. You can pick these up for a buck or so apiece at the corner grocery or grab a five-pack with free shipping at DealExtreme for about $1.50. It feels like a slightly thicker credit card and is quite light. The developer says the two batteries should offer up to a three-year battery life (their marketing materials, however, only promise 18 months) due to BLE's low-duty cycle. You should be able to (as he put it, riffing on Ron Popeil), "set it and forget it." The company has tested the power draw off the prototypes to come to this conclusion. In use, I found the audio alert to be adequate. It's fairly tinny and high-pitched, so it was a bit hard to track down under normal family conditions -- with the TV on and kids yelling, but once they were hushed, I did quite well finding it in all the places my kids had hidden it. I paid them to play hide and seek with the test unit, to see how well the audio signal worked. We found that it was quite easy to degrade the signal a bit by putting the unit in the pantry behind a closed door, shoving it under couch cushions, and so forth -- but that for a normal home, the alert worked well enough for the device to be found. I also tested the "abandoned object" functionality, which provides the device leashing. Once I moved far enough away from the dongle, my phone vibrated and sounded, letting me know I had forgotten to take the dongle with me. This worked, as promised, even when I had other apps open -- such as Mobile Safari and Mail. Aside from a few minor early prototype bugs, I also noticed that the software did drain my iPhone 4S battery slightly faster usual. The developer says this is due to developer tools that will not be in the final release. The Wallet TrackR represents an evolution in development, dating back to an original 2009 Bluetooth-based design. Because regular Bluetooth has much different power consumption characteristics, the initial system had only a one week battery life. "It was really a big black ugly thing," explained developer Chris Herbert. "We got it to market and had some initial success, but BLE was the tech we were waiting for." Phone Halo plans to ship units in April 2013. They will cost US$49.95 per device, although you can pre-order now for just $19 each in a sort of non-Kickstarter Kickstarter campaign. Herbert explains that the company will not charge cards until the units are ready to ship.
Mosoro releases its Bluetooth LE sensors and SDK for VIP appcessory developers
Since we last heard about Mosoro's Lego-brick sized Bluetooth LE modules, they've changed their names, picked up another member and are now making their way to iOS app developers. The 3D-Motion's got an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer, while the Enviro measures temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. New to the team is Proximity, useful for triggering location-based apps and tracking motion for creating alerts. All three rechargeable Bluetooth low energy sensors have "shake-to-wake" support, an RGB "glow-cap" for notifications and a humble programmable button. They are expected to hit retail in fall 2012, but "VIP" app developers can grab them now, as well as the SDK which simplifies iOS Bluetooth integration. Got the ideas and inclination to become one of Mosoro's "rock star app-developer partners?" Then go sign up on the website and see if you make the VIP grade.
MetaWatch offers iPhone compatibility in new developer kit
So, you didn't get signed up to get one of the first Pebble watches on Kickstarter? Well, you have a fallback plan now. MetaWatch, a spinoff of watchmaker Fossil, has released a new version of its self-named watch in developer kit format that specifically uses Bluetooth 4.0 (found in the iPhone 4S and iPad) to communicate to your device without being a drain on the watch or phone battery. This isn't exactly a mainstream smartwatch ... yet. It's really targeted to developers who can write their own apps to take information from the iPhone and display it on the watch, but hopefully if enough devs get excited about MetaWatch you'll be able to purchase one without the need to be a programming genius. The watch is available immediately from TI's eStore (it uses a low-power microcontroller from TI) and MetaWatch's store page for US$199.
TI promises 33 percent drop in power consumption with new Bluetooth system-on-chip
Bluetooth may enable a whole host of different wireless possibilities, but that often comes at the expense of one important factor: battery life. Texas Instruments is hoping to make that slightly less of an issue with its new CC2541 Bluetooth system-on-a-chip, however, which promises a 33 percent reduction in power consumption compared to its previous CC2540 SoC. That's done without changing the configuration of the chip itself, which means manufacturers will be able to switch to the new design without making any major changes to their own devices -- it's intended for use in everything from sports and fitness gadgets to home automation equipment. The full rundown of specs can be found in the press release after the break.
Apple reportedly stepping up its connectivity game, wants to be the center of your wireless universe
Apple is purportedly readying a new certification chip for accessory makers that will allow wireless access and connectivity to that pile of iOS devices you're hoarding. Announced during an accessory manufacturer's conference in China, the new chip could possibly allow connections across AirPlay, Bluetooth and WiFi. The Cupertino crew hope that this will encourage even more iOS-friendly add-ons and docks to market. According to Macotakara, Apple apparently added that it's working on support for AirPlay over Bluetooth, presumably bringing with it some improved battery longevity, and tying into the new low-powered Bluetooth 4.0 found on the iPhone 4S. Well, you know us, we always love seeing new iPad accessories. Update: An anonymous attendee has got in touch to tell us that the authentication chip is low-cost and faster update that doesn't bring any new features not already seen on current chips. Our mole added that Apple didn't directly announce any plans to extend AirPlay functionality to Bluetooth.
Freescale Home Health Hub wants to usher in the era of connected medical devices
Freescale has its little silicon hands in all sorts of things: e-readers, smartphones, tablets, even refrigerators. Now the manufacturer is looking to make a dent in the healthcare industry with a connected platform called Home Health Hub (HHH). The i.MX28-based HHH isn't an actual product, but a reference platform for others to build on. The ARM9 processor is connected to a host of networking interfaces, including WiFi, Bluetooth (as well as its low-power implementation), Zigbee, sub-1GHz and Ethernet. The Hub is supposed to be just that, a central point for connecting various medical devices like blood pressure monitors or glucometers that then feeds data to a tablet. Developers and other interested parties can get their hands on the reference platform from Digi International as the iDigi Telehealth Application Kit for $499. Check out the full PR after the break.
Casio shows Bluetooth Low Energy watch prototype, awaits Bluetooth Low Energy phones
Sony Ericsson, Citizen, and others have been taking occasional shots at integrating Bluetooth into wrist-bound baubles for several years now, but the problems have been pretty obvious -- Bluetooth wasn't really optimized to transfer nibble-sized chunks of information while sipping almost imperceptible amounts of power, so you end up with a watch that dies in hours or days rather than years. That's where Casio comes into play, showing off a prototype watch here at CES that makes use of Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to your phone and keep you abreast of calls and emails without the hassle of pulling the handset out of your pocket (or, worse yet, your belt-mounted holster). You can also silence alarms just by tapping on the watch, get your time synced, and generally look awesome while doing it -- if it were a production unit, that is. Problem is that there aren't any phones on the market with Bluetooth 4.0 support just yet, but Casio's confident enough that they're in the pipeline to say that they want to product their first BLE-enabled retail watches in 2011. The company is claiming two years of battery life off a single coin cell assuming twelve hours of use a day... so yeah, the benefits for this type of product are pretty clear. Follow the break for the full press release.
Bluetooth 4.0 with low energy (almost) finally ready to roll
Molasses, snails and glaciers: none are slower than an organization developing a new wireless standard. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is no exception -- it's been nearly three years since it announced it would roll Wibree into Bluetooth and four months since it made Bluetooth 4.0 official, but still no dice. This week, the SIG says the low-power specification is ready for action, its minutiae finalized. However, fine print in the org's press release disagrees. The main reason for Bluetooth 4.0 was to include lower power devices, but that all-important integration is still pending a "before June 2010" completion date. That means we still won't see Bluetooth-toting cats till the end of the year, and we have no idea what SIG has accomplished in the meanwhile. Press release after the break.
Bluetooth 4.0 devices to make the scene later this year
We were glad to see Bluetooth low energy actually added to the Bluetooth 4.0 spec, but of course the question remained: when are we going to get our hands on it? By Q4 this year, apparently -- at least according to the Bluetooth SIG. But don't expect any dramatic changes in battery life for most of your gadgets: while the low energy spec introduces connectivity to a host of lower-power devices that have in the past relied on proprietary technology (such as watches, pedometers, and cats), your traditional Bluetooth devices, such as phones and laptops, will consume roughly the same amount of power. Indeed, the low energy spec is merely throwing smaller devices (with smaller amounts of data to transfer) in to the mix: if you want Trans-Siberian Orchestra to sound as glorious as ever on your wireless headphones, you'll need to push as much data (and hence draw as much power) with version 4 as you would with version 3. If you've ever heard "A Mad Russian's Christmas," you'd know what we're talking about.
Broadcom announces Android support, three-pack of chips to make your phones more awesome
Chip maker Broadcom has unveiled no fewer than three new mobile-themed hunks of silicon this week in preparation for MWC in just a few days' time. You ready for this? Alright, first up we've got the catchily-named BCM20751, which performs the rather ordinary tasks of GPS, Bluetooth, and FM radio management but also throws in an audio processor to offload some work from the phone's primary CPU, which the company says can reduce battery consumption enough to improve playback time by up to 100 percent in some situations. Next up, we've got the BCM4751, a GPS receiver that Broadcom's confident is going to set a new benchmark for mobile location-based services; a complete setup takes less than 30 square millimeters of precious board space and is claimed to be a guru at picking up weak signals all the while sipping power. Finally, the BCM2049 supports Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, FM (both transmitting and receiving), and Bluetooth Low Energy -- something that was recently adopted for standardization in Bluetooth 4.0. All three should be on display at the show next week. That's not all, though -- the company is also announcing comprehensive support for Android across much of its product range, which seems like a pretty prudent business decision all things considered.
Bluetooth 4.0 finally rolls low energy tech into a shipping standard
Bluetooth low energy and its predecessors (think Wibree) have been in the pipe for ages now, but we might actually see this tech take off en masse for the first time now that the Bluetooth SIG has officially added it into a release: 4.0. While Bluetooth 3.0 was all about high energy with the introduction of WiFi transfer, 4.0 takes things down a notch by certifying single-mode low energy devices in addition to dual-mode devices that incorporate both the low energy side of the spec plus either 2.1+EDR or 3.0. In a nutshell, the technology should bring a number of new categories and form factors of wireless devices into the fold since 1Mbps Bluetooth low energy can operate on coin cells -- the kinds you find in wristwatches, calculators, and remote controls -- and the SIG's pulling no punches by saying that "with today's announcement the race is on for product designers to be the first to market." Nokia pioneered Wibree, so you can bet they'll be among the frontrunners -- bring it, guys.
Texas Instruments CC2540 promises ultra-low energy Bluetooth
Texas Instruments is pretty chuffed with itself right about now, as it's prepping to demonstrate a swell-sounding new system-on-chip that takes Bluetooth connectivity to the extreme reaches of low energy consumption. About to be shown off in Munich tomorrow, the new CC2540 takes up a measly 6mm-squared of real estate, and is said to be able to operate for more than a year on a single button cell battery. With the reduced physical size and embedded Flash memory, this should be easier to install and update as necessary too. Considering the battery-draining ways of current Bluetooth tech, such claims sound preposterously awesome, but we'll keep our giddy enthusiasm in check until early next year when samples will begin rolling out. For now, you can check out the older video below 'splaining the prospective benefits in more detail. Read - Texas Instruments press release Read - Bluetooth low energy webpage Read - Video explanation of Bluetooth low energy
CSR demonstrates Bluetooth low energy transfer
We know you're not really down with digesting any more catchphrases, but the technology formerly known as Ultra Low Power Bluetooth / Wibree is now being dubbed Bluetooth low energy. Now that we're clear on nomenclature, you may be thrilled to know that CSR showcased its recently unveiled BlueCore7 dual mode (Bluetooth low energy and Bluetooth v2.1) chip at a Bluetooth SIG Medical Working Group meeting. According to onlookers, the handset was able to transfer data to another nearby mobile using just 3 frequencies rather than 32, resulting in an unquantifiable decrease in power consumption. Sounds like a winner on the surface, but we have this weird feeling that mass adoption of this tech is like, years away.
