We are about to be bitten by Bluetooth. Jack Schofield reports on a fast- approaching wired-up world where your laptop could chat to your central heating via the Internet
You’re rushing to the airport, late for a plane. As you enter the terminal building, your palmtop computer beeps. You accept the connection and the airport net conveys the message that the flight has been delayed. Next, your screen displays a map that shows you how to get to the lounge reserved for stranded passengers. Then the airline sends you some electronic credits for refreshments: you can “spend” these by beaming them at a vending machine or till. Fine: you can catch up with some reading. You use your palmtop’s connection to the airport net to start a file download, saving it to the notebook PC that’s still in your briefcase. It’s usually part of your personal area network or piconet, but since all connections are wireless, you don’t need to dig it out and plug it in.
As you enter the lounge, someone rings the doorbell back at your house. Your palmtop screen opens at your home Web page, showing the image from the security camera over the door. It’s the milkman. Time to open a voice connection. Your fridge hasn’t paid the bill in full. “Sorry, I can’t come to the door right now,” you say. “Catch me next week and we’ll sort it out.”
Perhaps you forgot to check in a delivery of eggs, yoghurt or milk. There’s a barcode scanner on the fridge door, so it’s not hard to do. Better check the fridge’s Web page and see what’s been used during the past week. And while you’re at it, you may as well see what the fridge has decided to order from the supermarket.
Science fiction? All of this is already possible. Electrolux has demonstrated a Net-connected fridge, Bang & Olufsen is working on the hi-fi and Merloni on the washing machine. Cellphones are already being used to check bank accounts and buy things from vending machines in Finland. Barcode readers are being used to scan and order groceries from supermarkets in the United Kingdom. In the next five or 10 years, this kind of thing should become common.
Computer companies like Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Novell call it “pervasive computing”, which sounds harder than it is. We’re already familiar with the idea of “pervasive telephony”, which means people can send and receive telephone calls almost anywhere, instead of being limited by the range of a box on the end of a bit of electrical string.
Pervasive computing extends the same idea to the Web. Wireless communications will provide instant access to a universal “Webtop” that can be linked to almost anything. This is merely the next step in a process of computerisation that started with giant machines in back rooms and has progressed through generations of smaller and cheaper systems. In fact, computer chips are now small and cheap enough to be embedded in appliances rather than used as general-purpose systems. Just as nobody worries about how many motors they own (in washing machines, vacuum cleaners, VCRs and so on), people won’t worry about how many computers they own.
At the moment, the Web mainly connects desktop and notebook computers with “hosts” or servers that store information. But it’s rapidly being extended to handheld computers, cellphones and other wireless information devices.
Television sets, games consoles, VCRs, cameras and other electronic products are next, followed by “white goods” such as fridges, toasters, and washing machines.
There’s no telling where it will end. But Vint Cerf, the “father of the Internet” and the senior vice-president responsible for United States phone company MCI’s Internet backbone, isn’t worried. Last year, he told an Internet executive summit they were testing an addressing system with enough space “to let every electron have its own Web page if it wants to”.
Cerf said: “I think that the chips to do Internet protocol [communications] will be cheap enough by 2005 that we will put them in light sockets. And when we turn the lights off and on, instead of interrupting the current, we’ll actually be sending little Internet packets to the light bulb telling it to turn off and turn on. This will, of course, also teach us the meaning of Internet security.”
Cerf also suggested that Internet-enabled bathroom scales and other devices could automatically update your doctor’s computer with your weight and other data that would enable it to monitor your health. One possible downside, he joked, is that your doctor’s computer might instruct your refrigerator’s computer to not open its door when it puts you on a diet.
And with the Internet connecting almost everything to almost everything else, the majority of Internet traffic will not be people talking to people, it will be devices talking to other devices.
Of course, some companies have been trying to sell “home automation” systems for at least 25 years, without generating much of a market. Most systems have used the house’s electrical wiring to carry signals, but they’ve been relatively expensive to install and cumbersome to use.
That’s about to change, thanks to the Internet and a “wireless wire” called Bluetooth. The Internet makes things easy to control via a point-and-click interface. Bluetooth – named after King Harald Blaatand (Bluetooth), who united the provinces of Denmark in the 10th century – makes it easy to connect things.
Bluetooth is an industry standard development started by the Scandinavian cellphone makers Ericsson and Nokia, and backed by IBM (the world’s largest computer company), Intel (the largest chip manufacturer) and Toshiba. The consortium started last year, hoping to attract 100 members, and quickly signed up more than 1 000.
Bluetooth is a royalty-free radio frequency networking system operating on the unlicensed 2,4GHz to 2,5GHz industrial- scientific-medical (ISM) microwave band. It has a range of about 10cm to 10m, which can be extended to 100m by using a more powerful transmitter. But the aim is to implement it as a small, cheap module with a 10m range. The prototype Bluetooth module measures only 17mm by 33mm, with radio transceiver chips like Ericsson’s PBA 313 01/2 down to 10,2mm by 14mm. The price will depend mainly on volume, and modules will be manufactured in millions.
Jim Kardack, chair of the Bluetooth special interest group, says Bluetooth has three “usage models” which correspond to target markets.
The first is as a “universal data access point” that can be sited in public places like airports. Users with Bluetooth devices will be able to use the hub to connect to networks like the Internet.
The second use is as a straightforward cable replacement, where it has some advantages over infra-red connections. The third is for the creation of “personal ad hoc networks” for the exchange of information. This might include a number of devices operated by one person (cellphone, handheld and notebook computers, personal stereo, digital cameras, and so on) or a group of friends exchanging information, for example playing a game.
While they’re not on Kardack’s schema, home networks are already being developed. Up to eight Bluetooth devices can be connected in a piconet, with one master and seven slaves. (It’s a frequency-hopping system: all the devices have to hop together, following the master.) Up to 10 piconets can operate in the same area, hopping differently. More than 200 devices can follow the traffic on a piconet without actively transmitting data. The frequency hopping helps Bluetooth cope with interference from baby monitors, garage door openers and microwave ovens, which may use the same frequencies.
The first Bluetooth devices are expected soon, but no one knows when they will become ubiquitous. One analyst has suggested that people won’t want to use their palmtop computer or cellphone to turn lights on and off because it’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
But if Bluetooth is so cheap the cost doesn’t matter, and it’s easy to use, and it adds extra facilities – such as the ability to turn lights on and off from another continent – then maybe they will.
Joyce Putscher, director of the Converging Markets & Technologies Group of Cahners In-Stat research group in the US, warns there will be a delay between shipments of Bluetooth modules and products appearing on the market. But she thinks “Bluetooth really will begin to sink its teeth into the market in 2001. If acceptance … goes well, the manufacture of Bluetooth-enabled equipment could exceed 400-million units by 2004.” She thinks adoption will start with things like high-end cellphones before filtering down to printers and other devices as Bluetooth modules become cheaper.
Adoption will also be affected by the rate at which products are designed and replaced. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reckons “there will be more Barbie dolls connected to the Internet in five years than there will be Americans.
“This changes electronic commerce. There’ll be Barbie dolls calling up to order a dress.”
Negroponte highlights toys as being among the first non-computer devices to populate the Net because they have a high rate of change. Kids ll are alwayslll getting newll ones. Con-lllversely,lll Bill Joy, co- founder of Sunll Microsystems,ll thinks thell electricityll mains will be most popular for home networking and the transition will take longer.
“If you want to get into the situation where all the white goods in your house – your dishwasher, washing machine, drier, refrigerator – are networked so that they can be serviced remotely, you have to go through a replacement cycle on those as well. And how often do you replace the fridge? Probably every 10 years. So we have to go through a cycle and a half of that to get ubiquity.”
But every new technology, from radio to the Web, lllis being llladopted more rapidly than the one before. If the pace of change keeps accelerating, by 2005, pervannsive compu- lllting should llllbe, well, llllpervasive.