Re: for robots and industry: BlueTooth bad, Zigbee good - thanks for response

Bruce,

1. True, Bluetooth is embedded in a lot of cellphones. But cellphones
is not the only device that carries Bluetooth, as you already know. 
However, SonyEricsson has created the ROB1, which is a Linux robot
that is controlled by Bluetooth, rolls around, and takes pictures.
Take a look here:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/rob1

2. Well, if Lego or JCX, was Bluetooth enabled, then it would be of
some help to this group. I would love to carry in my pocket a remote
contol (ie. a cell phone or PDA) for my lego robot. Almost every
cellphone and PDA on the market has 4-way or 5-way navigation, so
that's great for a robot remote control.

3. The JB-22 is a Bluetooth development kit that allows Java
developers to write Bluetooth applications between two PCs. The
examples in the kit allow you to quickly get up to speed with device
discovery, service searching, and two-way communication. However, this
kit also allows you to communicate with other Bluetooth devices (that
are not Java-enabled).  You can also use the libraries in the kit to
write Java Bluetooth applications for JSR-82 cellphones.

4. This is no performance metric, but I've made cached connections
from two Bluetooth enabled laptops (where I sent a file from the
client to the server) in about 2-3 seconds.

5. There's a long story here. Sprint and Verizon operate CDMA
networks. Cingular and T-Mobile operate GPRS networks. The CDMA
network providers cripple parts of Bluetooth functionality because
they don't want the short range wireless network to compete with their
revenue stream.  Having that said, the Bluetooth profiles that are a
threat to the CDMA network providers are DUN and LAP. DUN and LAP
involve internet access, and not serial communications. So, the
Bluetooth devices may have some Bluetooth profiles disabled, the SPP
(Serial Port Profile) is not disabled because it's not a threat to the
CDMA network providers.

6. If your cellphone or PDA supports J2ME, then it's end-user programmable.

Now, here's the potential for Lego and Bluetooth: I can create one (or
many) custom Bluetooth services for my lego robot. My Bluetooth
cellphone or PDA can discover, search for the services, and send data
to the Lego robot. Since alot of other devces support Bluetooth, I can
do things like:

a. provide internet access to my robot (probably not on a CDMA network) 
b. send cool stuff from my phone (like text or pictures) to my robot
c. grab Bluetooth GPS data and relay it to my robot
d. the list goes on and on

Regards,

Bruce 



On 6/2/05, Bruce Boyes <bboyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 01:47 PM 6/1/2005, Bruce Hopkins wrote:
> >I'm biased, so here's my rebuttal:
> 
> I should have made it more clear that all my BT remarks were in the context
> of use in the industrial or embedded spaces such as robotics where we get
> access to the hardware. Sure, millions of BT cell phones are shipping, but
> that's no help to this robotics group. BT may be fine in other spaces, but
> in the embedded or industrial space - I still don't see any traction there.
> 
> 
> >1. The JB-22 is a great, affordable Bluetooth development kit under $200 USD.
> >http://www.javabluetooth.com/jb22.html
> 
> Wow! Thanks! This is the most interesting BT device I've ever seen. I was
> wondering if JSR-82 was going anywhere.
> 
> Have you used them?
> 
> So if you then want to add BT to a robot (which is not a USB master), then
> what? You'd want a JSR-82 compliant chipset or pluggable module with a
> serial, parallel, SPI or I2C interface.
> 
> This kit looks mainly aimed at PC to PC or PC to existing BT device
> development, rather than "add BT to your hardware"
> 
> 
> >2. Class 1 Bluetooth devices have a range of +300ft. Anycom makes one
> >that is rated at 330ft, but tests have shown that it can communicate
> >at 500 ft.
> >http://www.anycom.com/anycom/products/prod_main.php?prodid=CC3035&lang=us
> 
> Also very interesting. They don't list power consumption, but it must be
> less than 500 mA to work off the USB 1.1 port.
> 
> So to what other devices can you connect?
> http://www.javabluetooth.com/jsr82devices.html
> Just cell phones, that's all.
> No embedded control or industrial devices.
> 
> Do you think this will change?
> 
> >3. Bluetooth services can be cached, and connections from clients can
> >be made without the latency of device and service discovery.
> 
> I don't know enough about how that works to comment in detail. If you do
> this, what then is the connect time from a sleeping state?
> 
> 
> >4. Cell phone vendors (Motorola, Nokia, SonyEricsson, etc) do NOT
> >cripple Bluetooth functionality. Blame that on the mobile networks
> >(Sprint and Verizon are notorious).
> 
> True, but the end result is the same - seen from the eyes of the users, BT
> doesn't deliver what it promised. There's no way the user can undo the
> crippling, so we're stuck with BT devices which can't do anything.
> 
> 
> >5. Bluetooth has a VERY strong momentum in the industry. Over 5
> >million, Bluetooth devices ship per week. No, that's not a typo; 5
> >million devices per week:
> >http://www.bluetooth.com/news/releases.asp?A=2&PID=1521&ARC=1
> >
> >Regards,
> >
> >Bruce Hopkins
> 
>  From the above these are going into:
> "mobile phones, cars, portable computers, mp3 players, mice and keyboards"
> 
> Nothing in the industrial or end-user-programmable embedded space.
> 
> These are all mass-market devices sold by a relative handful of large
> companies and the end users can't change them. So it's like point and shoot
> cameras vs DSLR. For embedded systems and robots we need to be able to fuss
> around with the BT device, or at least access its (hopefully standard) API.
> Like JSR-82 and the BT USB slave you mention above.
> 
> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> Now I recognize your name: Bluetooth for Java, by Bruce Hopkins and Ranjith
> Antony
> 
> So -- what's your take on the future of BT in applications accessible to
> developers (that is, not the canned mass market apps like cell phones)?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Bruce (the other - Bruce Boyes)
> 
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