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I'm specifically saying that the bluetooth devices will not be locked to a specific hardware, even without this js. That's all that matters.

That's fine, so long as the services and characteristics sent by the device are publicly documented services, particularly those meeting a publicly documented profile. Otherwise, if neither the application's source code nor the services and characteristics provided by the device are published, each user of an operating system not supported by the device maker will have to reverse-engineer the proprietary services and characteristics provided by the device in order to write an application from scratch that interprets the characteristics that the device is sending.

I'm specifically saying that the bluetooth devices will not be locked to a specific hardware, even without this js. That's all that matters.

That's fine, so long as the services and characteristics sent by the device are publicly documented services, particularly those meeting a publicly documented profile. Otherwise, if neither the application's source code nor the services and characteristics provided by the device are published, each user of an operating system not supported by the device maker will have to reverse-engineer the proprietary services and characteristics provided by the device in order to write an application from scratch that interprets the characteristics that the device is sending.

I won't be ditching my Casio for that thing, but I reckon the battery life will be low because of the screen. Besides, the battery is not that large to begin with, if the user doesn't make calls the Bluetooth v4 connection won't drain the battery very much, see the "Bluetooth Smart" part: https://developer.bluetooth.org/TechnologyOverview/Pages/v4.aspx

Citizen has been selling Bluetooth 4 enabled watches for some time, their watches use the bluetooth connection the get the current time from the internet a couple of times a day and run from a tiny solar cell: http://www.citizenwatch.com/en-ir/2012/10/12/citizen-eco-drive-unveils-proximity/

A timepiece that tells time? That's crazy talk!

I won't be ditching my Casio for that thing, but I reckon the battery life will be low because of the screen. Besides, the battery is not that large to begin with, if the user doesn't make calls the Bluetooth v4 connection won't drain the battery very much, see the "Bluetooth Smart" part: https://developer.bluetooth.org/TechnologyOverview/Pages/v4.aspx

Citizen has been selling Bluetooth 4 enabled watches for some time, their watches use the bluetooth connection the get the current time from the internet a couple of times a day and run from a tiny solar cell: http://www.citizenwatch.com/en-ir/2012/10/12/citizen-eco-drive-unveils-proximity/

I think there's a good chance this will use Bluetooth Low Energy, which can pause an arbitrarily long time between messages in either direction.

> Hint: You can't, you're now violating your licensing agreement.

It wouldn't surprise me if the countdown has started to amend that licensing agreement with language similar to "device whitelisting is allowed solely for the prevention of circumvention of protections to intellectual property rights blah blah blah", so that cases like this are given the green light.

Don't forget that the Bluetooth consortium is just a bunch of megacorps --- hey, guess what? How surprising! Sony is a member!

Eh? If you want to use ZigBee in your wireless gizmo, you buy a ZigBee module just like you buy a Bluetooth module, and put it in.

If you want to sell ZigBee modules that you make yourself, your company joins the ZigBee Alliance for $3500/year, a trivial amount if you're paying yourself a salary (and if you're serious about compliance to the specification and using the ZigBee logo in your advertising).

If you want to sell someone else's ZigBee modules, you don't pay anything.

These are all similar to Bluetooth, except that the lowest membership grade in the Bluetooth SIG is $7500/year.

1. VESA
2. The Open Group
3. IEEE
4. GSM
5. The Unicode Consortium
6. Bluetooth SIG
7. CAN
8. EIA (responsible for, among other things, JEDEC, who are responsible for DDR and related standards)

I mean, everyone loves that name.. and it's really taken off hasn't it?

https://www.bluetooth.org/admin/bluetooth2/news/st ory.php?storyid=629
Awareness rose most significantly in the US, where for the first time over 50 percent of the respondents recognized the Bluetooth brand: over the course of the study, awareness rose from just 22 percent in 2003 to 41 percent in 2004 and then to 58 percent in 2005.

How long has BT been around now? if Blu-Ray takes that long, it's dead in the water...

Heh- Read through the slashdot comments and find an answer!

iSync synchronized perfectly via Bluetooth. So there is no issue there.

But I still can't get the phone to pop up alerts and allow Address Book to send SMS messages.

Someone else also listed a website, Bluetooth Device Qualification Web Site which may hold a solution to my issues with application between the phone and OS X.

Let the learning continue!

The is one resource for information on Bluetooth compatability and that is the list of qualified products on the Bluetooth.org qualification program site. (It's a bitch to find via links though.) One search and then a click on the "details" will tell you exactly which profiles that device is qualified for. If you have multiple devices, just check that they match up wrt profiles and you are good to go.

Why they don't advertice that list to help consumers is beyond me. (Probably because it's a lot of work to figure out.) BTW you should look for devices which support the Sync profile. Some devices (eg Nokia) implement their own sync system on top of serial port profile instead, that works too but it's not as "clean" and requires special PC software.

On topics of phones I'd ignore the ringtones part, just don't use annoying ringtones. (Mine is always set to silent.) Personally I like Sony-Ericsson phones, but that's just me. (They tend to work well with Bluetooth as well.)

Many newer phones support Java MIDP (J2ME) which might be fun if you like programming and want to add a little to your own phone.

Actually, the phone most likely doesn't have Bluetooth built-in at all. It's not crippled. See the official Bluetooth qualification page:
http://qualweb.bluetooth.org/Template2.cfm?LinkQua lified=QualifiedProducts&Details=Yes&ProductID=160 6
and note that OBEX is not on the list. This phone isn't getting OBEX unless Motorola does a lot to the firmware.

Sorry my friend, but your some of your statments about Bluetooth are incorrect. I've developed several Bluetooth applications for the Mac and the PC. Here's a link to my Bluetooth controled remote control plaform using National Instruments hardware.

Bluetooth is all about low power consumption, and reliable serial communications. It was origninally developed to simply replace the standard serial interface. It is meant to be used as a replacement litterally only for the cable. The core bluetooth specification does not introduce any new technologies, but simply replaces old technologies with a wireless aspect.

Now there are some profiles that do some rediculous things over bluetooth (like the internet gateway profile, or piconet... ludicrous). Bluetooth was never meant to be a networking device... it was meant to standardize wireless mice, and basic serial devices. The big deal with bluetooth is its fundamental specification that has a great way to add profiles to do whatever you like.

Bluetooth has nothing to do with speed. The specification maxes out at like 926K/s (I might be a little off). That's in a clean room, with absolutely no interferance.

There are two major types of bluetooth running modes. 100mW and ~10mW. That is tiny compared to 802.11b. Bluetooth devices are specifically design to be low power consumption, and can provide states of next to no power consumption.

Of course Bluetooth is "on top of" Zigbee". There are so many stardarized profiles for bluetooth, why would anyone go through and remake those? More than likely, (though I can't say for certain), Zigbee will be design specifically to be backwards compatible with or have a "bluetooth" emulation mode so we can keep using all those bluetooth devices that are out! And guess what, when Zigbee is replaced, I bet whatever comes out after that will too!

This is a general reminder, not everything you read is true. Please research first!

"Promoter" is a membership level (the highest one, Ericsson did came up with the technology after all) of the Bluetooth SIG, and this seems to be the context of the quote. Also notice that it says "chip" customers. The 2nd article mentioned Ericsson will still do software development.

Actually, Bluetooth is not explicitly 2.4GHz. It frequency hops a band around 2.4GHz. It only keeps the same frequency for a few ms, before switching to another, which makes it rather noise immune: if a frequency is noisy, it just skips over to the next clear one. It's run by a special interest group (SIG) made up of several leading technology companies. More information on Bluetooth specifications.

Actually, Bluetooth is not explicitly 2.4GHz. It frequency hops a band around 2.4GHz. It only keeps the same frequency for a few ms, before switching to another, which makes it rather noise immune: if a frequency is noisy, it just skips over to the next clear one. It's run by a special interest group (SIG) made up of several leading technology companies. More information on Bluetooth specifications.

Isn't that exactly what Bluetooth was supposed to bring us?

Here is the spec sheets: clicky, but I think it's in acrobat 6, which means its unreadable in linux (with acroread from adobe). If anyone knows how to read pdf's made with acrobat 6 on linux, please tell.

I'm typing this over a bluetooth enabled keyboard, to my bluetooth enabled laptop. And you know, I just cannot figure out how my phone and laptop keep that darned address book synchronized. It really has me puzzled. Whatever it is is sure is useful.
Hmm. let me wiggle over to check the links here, using my mouse.
Let's not even talk about a headset or two.
Definately dead. Yup.
Whatever.

Have you looks at the bluetooth spec?
The bandwidth is 723.2/57.6 kbps asymmetric and 433.9 symmetric. While that's pretty damned fast for printing or a mouse or a keyboard, it's nowhere NEAR fast aneough for "transparent" access to the device.

Aaah, but what happens when people find an alternative? My mom (yeah,yeah...) was shopping for a computer to use in web publishing. Previous OS: Windows 98 SE. She bought an iBook, and as a direct result the support phones to me has gone down from 2 a day to 2 a month. And then it's usually about the web publishing tool.

As a result of switching to MacOS X, life at work becomes unbearable for her. She gets pissed off if a flaky Win2k driver results in a 2-hour work loss, as we should be. The colleauges shrug it off andgo for a smoke while the computer reboots. How did we get used to this? I think we all should use an OS that is more stable than our everyday OS just to expect more.

Sometimes the bugs aren't in the code, but in the infratructure. Let me tell you the Saga of the Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse...
'Twas in the days where the Bluetooth system was in its infancy. XP just reached SP1 and MacOS X ruled the user-friendly skies. I borrowed a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse to test at home. As I read the description on the web page, I looked forward to the " effortless, cable-free connections with Bluetooth compatible devices*, including phones" as advertised on the web page.

I went home and tried to set up this little blue wonder. I was merrily greeted with a "FUCK YOU go buy XP" message on the screen of my Win2k machine. Oh fiddlesticks, I said to my self and phoned a friend with XP. We went to try the Bluetooth wonder on his machine. I popped the USB dongle in, and by the way it is a LONG dongle. The always-friendly message popped up on the screen: "Your system suck, upgrade to XP SP1 now", wich was fortunlately included on a CD with the mouse. I upgraded the system and half an hour later I rebooted (twice) and popped in the Bluetooth XP stack drivers. It seems that Microsoft shipped the Bluetooth stack in English, French (Probably not anymore), Spanish, Japanese, two types of Chinese, Portugese, Arabic, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, and German but not in Norwegian as the system was installed.It would not install, as I might be exposed to English in some menus and we all know that it could be fatal. So the installation was cancelled and I poured my self a hard drink of vodka on the rocks.

A couple of days later, I was at my mom's chopping down a tree in the garden. The Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer for Bluetooth was still in my backpack. I went to the iBook to do some mental meditation when I got a wicked, wicked idea. What if I tried the Bluetooth dongle on the iBook? What could happen??? So I tried it. I popped it in and the blue light went on, and... ...nothing. Not a driver request, no fretting about shelling out more dough to buy another OS, no nothing. I was a bit disappointed, but then I saw it. The Bluetooth rune symbol went on and the The Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer for Bluetooth finally worked. Not on ANY Microsoft product I tried but the iBook. And it worked perfectly from the get-go. When my phone recieved an SMS, it popped automagically up on the screen where I could type in a reply, add the phone # to the address book or make it fetch a cortado from the caffeine dealer down the street.

Now that's good programming.

Disclaimer: I don't own an Apple, but I really like them. My home OS is RedHat 8. So now you know.

I believe the reason it only works for Ericsson phones is because it relies on support for publishing menus onto the phone. Something that Nokia does not support.

Any one know which part of the bluetooth spec this is? I've had a look here but I can't find it anywhere.

Bluetooth is no substitite for a cellular network but as for the range try 100m range i.e. 300ft as a maximum with 10m 30ft as the lower bound.

It all depends on the class of the device.

See Blue tooth specs.

or
article discussing bluetooth range.

Its pretty handy when you want to ditch cables for laptop / pda to phone connections and for in car use with a BT car kit ot head set - you can upgrade you phone without dumping the car kit for a start! Can be a pain in the ass to set up with some devices though.

1. True, thus, the device needs some logic and a device driver on the computer side, but that was inevidible anyway (how else would you make bluetooth work ;))
   Besides, if you read the spec for HID over BT it says "The Human Interface Device Profile Specification [4] defines the protocols, procedures, and features that shall be used by Bluetooth Human Interface Devices, such as keyboards, pointing devices, gaming devices, and remote monitoring devices. This specification uses the USB (Universal Serial Bus) definition of Human Interface Device (HID) [4] in order to leverage the existing class drivers for USB HID devices." which I take as it would be possible to make an USB hub that runs over BT.

2. This is mostly true.
   Bluetooth isn't designed for highspeed (atleast not 1.x of the standard) but you're missing something here. Most people aren't like us. If you could put the "USB-BT" hub anywhere in your room and connect keyboards, mouse, joystick, pocketpc's then I don't think they'd complain much about speed. Not now atleast. I mean, people run iPaq via the serial cable for crying out loud ;) (which is 0.1 Mbit/sec)

Btw, while they are developing the USB-BT hub, they could also make it act as a repeater for the BT in the computer, thus increasing the range of my other BT equipped hardware :-)

/Henric

d) bluetooth is i think 7 megabits, which is faster than serial/paralell's 116500 bps
Bzzzt. I'm too lazy to actually download the specs right now, but from prior reading I'm fairly confident in saying that the theoretical max bandwidth is more like one megabit per second. In practice I think it maxes out around 720 kbps, which should still be able to at least beat the serial port, so at least you're correct in that respect. Just wanted to point this out.

Hmmm...what if the issue isn't making the phones themselves smaller, but adding small bits of telephony to useful places?

Or, to put it another way, you have a "normal" sized cell phone (whatever we decide that is) that you carry with you, but everywhere you go there's a phone embedded into small spaces places?

Ooo, even better. What if the receivers are all built on a bluetooth standard. Everyone has a jabra-like ear piece that automatically reaches out and makes a "PAN" connection when it comes in range of a "button" phone. There's a button phone receiver on your monitor, in your car, and in your house, and when you're in any of those spaces, all you have to do is touch your ear piece and speak the number you want to dial. Calls are automatically forwarded to you depending on where the PAN is established. If you go to a store, your earpiece automatically connects to the button phone receiver on the shopping cart, so that if you have questions while you're shopping, you can ask a customer service rep (on their dime)...

Okay. Back to the crack smoking....

Bluetooth will let PCs, PDAs, phones, printers, headsets, sensors all interact with each other in a PicoNet, which is a small personal area network. There are currently two cards available which support the Bluetooth 1.0/1.1 stack on Windows and Linux. They are made by Motorola and IBM.

Here is a manual for IBM's bluetooth card if you want to take a look at the software and what Bluetooth is capable of.

Ericsson also makes a wireless Bluetooth headset that will attach itself as an audio device to your PC, cordless phone or mobile phone. You can leave your phone in your briefcase or in your living room and take a call in your office over your Piconet.

Pretty cool stuff, hopefully we'll see more in the way of innovation of Bluetooth in the next year.

-Pat

www.bluetooth.org is a better site.

The above www.bluetooth.org website is a redirector to a commercial company selling Bluetooth hardware to OEMs. I cannot find any information about Bluetooth on it.

It looks like they have finally added the option to set up a TCP/IP connection using the standard cradle. Previously PalmOS would have only let you use a modem to connect to network; now IR and direct serial are possible..We're getting there, just wait until there is a nice Bluetooth add-on for Palm, or better, the Visor.

I bet a lot of Slashdot users(who were too lazy to set up a PPP server on their home Linux boxes just to connect their Palms to the Internet) will be installing this upgrade and fulfilling their filthiest, hidden fantasies of using PalmVNC to use their Linux boxes or surfing the Web on the Palm from an ADSL connection..I, for one, will be trying them...