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Using Bluetooth

Bluetooth Revealed: The Insider\'s Guide to an Open Specification for Global Wireless Communications (2nd Edition)

The amazing technology of Bluetooth presents a great way of exchanging data between two wireless devices. Unlike telephones, there are no wires or messy leads to worry about. You can enjoy wireless communications with short distances of up to thirty feet.

Bluetooth also offers interoperability, meaning that you can use your portable Bluetooth device to connect with existing Bluetooth points. This way, you won’t have to carry a data lead or CDs of drivers around with you everywhere you go. You can enjoy the best of wireless without having to worry about installing your software.

With today’s Bluetooth, you can use your PDA and cell phone to surf the net or check emails as you travel. If you are in the business field, this can be very beneficial, especially if you like to check your email throughout the day. Bluetooth will enable you to check your email no matter where you are, which is great news for those who like to travel.

Bluetooth will also enable to you to transfer files as well, such as MP3 and photo to and from your mobile device. Bluetooth dominates the world of short range wireless, enabling you to do more than you may have thought possible.

One of the best things to Bluetooth and something everyone loves is the wireless headset. Bluetooth offers wire free headsets for your cell phone or computer, which is great for those who like to walk around or talk on the phone in the car, without having to worry about your hands getting in the way.

To make things even better, you can use a Bluetooth GPS device for satellite navigation on your PDA, laptop, or mobile. If you travel, this can be really great to have.

Tips from Bluetooth Revealed: The Insider\’s Guide to an Open Specification for Global Wireless Communications (2nd Edition)

Installing Bluetooth in Your Computer

Many new laptop computers include built-in Bluetooth transceivers. If yours does not, or if you want to add Bluetooth to a desktop system, you can add Bluetooth by connecting a Bluetooth adapter to one of the computer’s USB ports or a plugging a PC Card into a PCMCIA socket. The most common Bluetooth USB adapters are small modules, sometimes called dongles, like the one shown below, with a Type A connector that plugs directly into a Type A socket on the computer case.

When you connect a Bluetooth adapter to your computer for the first time, Windows automatically detects the adapter and installs a device driver, either from the software supplied with Windows, or from the software disk that came with the adapter.

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How Bluetooth Works

Bluetooth is a short-range, frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) radio service that operates in the same unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency range as WiFi networks and many cordless telephones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, garage door openers, and other wireless products. Frequency-hopping spread spectrum means that a Bluetooth transmitter splits the radio signal into very small segments and hops among 79 different frequencies 1,600 times per second to reduce interference and fading.

Bluetooth End to End

Because a Bluetooth radio is both a transmitter and a receiver, it’s sometimes known as a transceiver. In order to further reduce the likelihood of interference, Bluetooth transmitters use very weak signals. The output power of the most common Class 2 Bluetooth radios is just 2.5 milliwatts (0.0025 watts) or less, which gives the signal a range of about ten meters (30 feet) in free space. By comparison, a cellular mobile telephone typically transmits at .6 watts or 3 watts. More powerful Class 1 Bluetooth radios with a maximum range of about 100 meters (320 feet) are also available.

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Using Bluetooth

In spite of the name, Bluetooth is not a second-string pirate captain or a particularly bizarre dental malady. It is, in fact, a short-range wireless communications technology. The original Harald Bluetooth was a tenth-century Danish king who united parts of Norway and Denmark into a single Viking kingdom. Modern Bluetooth technology was named in his honor because it was intended to unite the worlds of portable computers and mobile telephones. Today, Bluetooth has become an industry standard for wireless connections among computers, printers, and other peripheral devices, along with mobile phones, headsets, and even wearable items with built-in wireless data exchange.

Bluetooth: Operation and Use

In general, Bluetooth is intended to replace wired connections between electronic equipment. Ultimately, the designers of Bluetooth hoped to completely replace the confusing tangle of wires and cables behind many computers with a single wireless interface module. More important, Bluetooth makes it possible to use external peripherals (including keyboards, mice, and printers) or transfer data to a computer without the need to find and attach a cable first.

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Bluetooth Essentials

Bluetooth was designed to replace the short cables that connect a desktop or laptop computer to peripheral devices such as the keyboard and mouse. If both your computer and your mobile telephone have Bluetooth adapters, it’s possible to establish a Bluetooth link between them and place calls to an Internet service provider (ISP). The maximum range of a Bluetooth connection is about 300 feet (100 meters), at a maximum data transfer rate of about 720 Kbps. In most cases, this kind of Internet connection is not worth the trouble to set it up; it’s mostly useful for uploading ringtones and other data to your phone or downloading text files or voice messages to your computer, rather than connecting the laptop to the Internet.

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Aeros Aeroscraft ML866

Let’s put it this way: You’ll certainly make an impression. It’s not exactly Air Force One, but with an Aeroscraft ML866 sky yacht, you’ll have a fully connected wireless office in the sky. Picture yourself commanding a high-definition video conference from your personal dirigible.

You’ll be tooling along at 138mph over the limos of lesser individuals. Imagine the command and control you’ll have over your empire from your bleeding-edge computerized office. And then laugh all the way over the bank as you think about the hangar fees your deflatable sky yacht is saving you.

fully connected wireless office in the sky

Cable On The Run (Part 2)

Continue from Part 2.

Group systems manager David Lloyd said the system produced near perfect accuracy and slashed operator working times. ?It is amazingly accurate,? he says. ?It takes 15 to 20 minutes to train operators in the system and it is then 99.9% accurate. In any stock control system, the keyword is accuracy. The only way this can fail is if the operator puts in the wrong information, but even then everything is recorded so there is an audit trail.

Building on WiFi is Wimax, or IEEE 802.16. At the early stages of adoption, it offers the potential to replace copper in the last mile and to support up to 75Mbit/s over tens of miles. In a few cases, entire cities have achieved WiMax coverage.

Another new kid on the wireless block is Zigbee. Based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, access to the specifications is controlled by the Zigbee Alliance. The key benefits are cheapness, simplicity and long battery life when compared with similar personal area network technologies, such as Bluetooth. Transmission range is up to 75m, bandwidth is up to 250kbit/s and nodes can be arranged in star, peer to peer or mesh topologies. The ability for Zigbee units to form mesh networks is seen as a key advantage, because that configuration can reroute should one node go down.

Expectations for Zigbee are high. Market research company Harbor Research says that, by 2008, there will 100million wireless sensors in use, up from about 200,000 today. The worldwide market for wireless sensor networks, it says, will grow from $100m in 2005 to more than $1billion by 2009.

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