"Bluetooth set to take over wireless from Wi-Fi..."

John Navas hath wroth:

Can we settle for 2 out of 3 manufacturers. There are 4000 members of the Bluetooth consortium. Searching the site for member names:

find that Sony is an associate member, but Kodak and Nikon are not. That fairly well defines the wireless technology used.

Digging further, I also find that Canon, Panasonic, Ricoh, Toshiba, and Vivitar are members of the Bluetooth SIG, while Casio, FujiFilm, Minolta, Konica, Olympus, and Polaroid are NOT members. Methinks the inevitable technology selection is predictable.

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Why? I wasn't trying to be exhaustive, and the situation might well change in the future.

Why? That's already a pretty good lineup for Bluetooth, and I don't see that current membership in the Bluetooth SIG has a major bearing on the likelihood of using Bluetooth in the future.

note that usb passed firewire only in certain segments. they each have their own advantages and disadvantages. usb tends to cover the slower and low end products, and firewire covers the faster and high end products. i've never seen a firewire mouse and dv cameras are pretty much all firewire (i seem to recall hearing about a low end usb2 dv camera). where they overlap, i.e. storage devices, usb2 is more prevalent unless one needs the additonal performance of firewire.

were konica & minolta really listed seperately? they merged a couple of years ago. of course, now that they aren't bothering with cameras anymore makes all of this moot...

John Navas hath wroth:

Thanks. I didn't know those existed. See my other post with a list of camera manufacturers that are Bluetooth SIG members. Methinks that will probably pedict the technology adopted by each.

Is there something about the title that I missed? "Bluetooth set to take over wireless from Wi-Fi..." Kinda sounds like Bluetooth wins while Wi-Fi loses to me.

Incidentally, the author brings up some good points, but his logic and predictions are somewhat odd. For example suggesting that "Once you have a standard for MIMO, every domestic hotspot will be able to send its signal at least twice as far as before." strikes me as something from someone that has never setup or maintained a wireless coffee shop hotspot. Most of them have me turn

*DOWN* the tx power so that freeloaders parked in the parking lot will not get a decent connection.

However, he does have an interesting point. While the IEEE deals with internal politics and intellectual property issues, Bluetooth blunders onward without much difficulty. Actually, from what I'm told, the Bluetooth SIG does not operate quite that smoothly with 4000 members. However, only the principal members:

required to assemble a standard. Since all of them have supplied intellectual property to the standard, they have a vested interest in its success.

Unfortunately, technical merit does not pre-define success or acceptance. I've seen far too many mediocre technologies be adopted, at the expense of a superior technology, to either the IEEE or the Bluetooth SIG to get it right.

Sure, if Verizon doesn't turn off all the OBEX profiles to promote their own BREW based services.

True for laptops. Not true for desktops. I don't have an accurate count, but my guess(tm) is that less than 20% of my customers laptops have Bluetooth. Perhaps 1% of the desktops have Bluetooth. None have Bluetooth access points. However, my guess(tm) is about 80% of the laptops have Wi-Fi and about 10% of the desktops. If we count the number of desktops that are wired into an ethernet LAN, but that there is a Wi-Fi access point available, methinks the number of Wi-Fi accessible desktops is about 80%. Bluetooth has a long way to catch up.

Bad example. Speed was not the deciding factor. It was the inability to run powered peripherals from a 4pin Firewire connection and Apple's rather odd Firewire licensing. Apple has since created the 6 pin Firewire connector, but that may be too late. Apple also cleaned up their licensing (by adding an evaluation license), but that's also too late:

also had an interesting ploy to attact vendors. The original license was by the port, but they only required a $1,500 license fee if one used the logo. No logo, no license fee. allowed many developers to buy (or steal) a development system, design a product, and only pay for the license when the product was done. Apple wanted license fees much earlier in the development cycle (which may have changed recently). That's not much of an issue with the larger manufacturers, but really important for independent designers and very small companies.

Meanwhile, USB is the defacto interface for Wi-Fi dongles, memory dongles, security dongles, copy protection dongles, headsets, game adapters, network adapters, joysticks, oscilloscopes, cameras, A/D converters, power line monitors, and all manner of contrivances that require power to operate. Methinks it would be difficult to justify a switch to Firewire for all of these.

nospam hath wroth:

No. Neither Konica, Minolta, or Konica/Minolta are listed at all. What I did was type into the search box every camera manufacturer that I could remember that made digital cameras. Some appeared, some didn't. I double checked a few using the associate member list at:

John Navas hath wroth:

Sorry. I didn't know about the Sony Bluetooth cameras and throught I could recover somewhat by suggesting that "two out three camera manufacturers prefer Wi-Fi".

In general, that's true. I just throught it was interesting that after reading the article about the inevitable, eventual, or probable demise of Wi-Fi due to IEEE politics and government regulations, that two manufacturers would chose to impliment Wi-Fi in a new product rather than Bluetooth. Surely if "Bluetooth [were] set to take over wireless from Wi-Fi...", Nikon and Kodak would have thought twice about using Wi-Fi.

as i recall, the 4 & 6 pin were just two variants and coexisted. apple chose to always use 6 pin and pc manufacturers tended to use the 4 pin connector. 4 pin was fine for connecting to a dv camera or a powered hard drive, but a bit of a problem for bus powered hard drives. also, firewire can also source a *lot* more power than usb can, making it possible to bus power 3.5" hard drives or cd burners.

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From one of my other posts: Why? That's already a pretty good lineup for Bluetooth, and I don't see that current membership in the Bluetooth SIG has a major bearing on the likelihood of using Bluetooth in the future.

I don't think the statement is that strong, especially given what it says in the body (e.g., "likely", "if").

Fair enough, but I still think his point has some merit -- as both range and density grow, increased interference is inevitable. When troubleshooting a wireless problem last week I counted 17 access points.

If it does, then it will presumably suffer in the market.

All of the Bluetooth I've installed supports networking.

I respectfully disagree.

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I think it's WAY too early with WAY too little data to call the eventual winner.

John Navas hath wroth:

Kinda like "Wireless Ready" which is really an oxymoron that means that wireless doesn't currently work and it's not ready. Equivocation in headlines is a great way of announcing that the contents are no better than guesswork. I read the article as declaring Bluetooth the eventual superior technology for various reasons, none of which are technical.

Only 17? Try Kismet on a Knoppix or Security Auditor CDROM. I sometimes run a sniffer when driving around Santa Cruz. Because Kismet also sees clients as well as access points that don't belch their SSID, I usually see 5 times as many radios. Also, I'm starting to see access points that will not respond to multiple probe request and thus are invisible to Netstumbler.

I also see LOTS of RF pollution. It hasn't become fatal yet, but it's close. The big offenders are high power outdoor repeaters, mesh networks, and rooftop amplified systems. The general RF pollution doesn't seem to affect indoor systems too horribly, but just rips on outdoor systems.

Of course, that doesn't stop brilliant plans to provide wide area wireless service: "The plan to build a 1,500-square-mile Wi-Fi network is underway"

can I say? RF pollution, reality, and simple system loading calculations cannot stop the Wi-Fi steamroller.

Yep. Verizon is about to lose me and a few friends if they don't get a clue. How I use *my* PDAphone off their network is my decision, not theirs.

Of course. That's not what I meant. I was trying to guess what the camera marketing research department was thinking in terms of potential audience. If they sold a camera with one or the other technology, what are the chances that the customer would already have the necessary equipment? With Wi-Fi, it's a fairly high percentage of home networks. With Bluetooth, it usually has to go peer-to-peer directly to a Bluetooth enabled computer. That may work with current laptops, but very very very few of the desktops I deal with have Bluetooth.

I'll resist the temptation to provide references and anecdotal stories as part of my never ending battle to avoid topic drift.

Do you know of anything newer to the market?These cameras were available

2002/2003 and all had mixed reviews e.g DSC-FX77 Features The 4-megapixel FX77 comes with a variant of Bluetooth that requires other Basic Imaging Profile (BIP)-ready products for Bluetooth connectivity to work. With BIP-ready products, the camera is able to send and receive images wirelessly. In addition, remote taking of pictures can be achieved with the use of a Sony CLIE. We witnessed this done but don't hold your breath with regard to most other Bluetooth devices currently available. In our testing, we turned blue trying to get the FX77 to work with an HP iPaq H5450 or a PC fitted with a USB Bluetooth adapter. Both of the devices support OBEX (Object Exchange) which BIP rides on, but they don't feature the imaging profile in question. When we contacted Sony, the company commented that more products that support the profile will be making an appearance soon.

What happened?

I seem to recall Sony as being very good at choosing what the consumer wants...Betamax ...and they did ever so well with DRM.

Bob

And in a few years time, we'll probably not think twice about not storing very much locally on devices my MP3 players or digital cameras. You'll snap a few pictures and wander along as the camera uploads the pictures via wireless to "My Documents" stored somewhere (!) on the internet.

Of course, we've got a zillion and one security issues to resolve first.

Rob.

Heavens, no! Security issues are resolved _after_ release :-(