Wireless_Technologies Gemeral http://www.devx.com/wireless/ http://www.palowireless.com/bluearticles/softtooth.asp Bluetooth http://www.devx.com/wireless/articles/Bluetooth/BtoothFAQ.asp#1.1 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/28/1440234&mode=thread http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/20/1351235&mode=thread http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/26/0458211&mode=thread http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/02/0229250&mode=thread http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/03/1243208&mode=thread http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/22/0146213&mode=thread general slashdot bluetooth search: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=bluetooth&op=stories&author=&topic=§ion=&sort=1 >ppliances... so like remote toaster owens?? :) There's remote keyboard/mouse/tv control/phone what else needs to be remote? No there isn't and none of them are using standard interfaces whatever there is are "propitiatory hacks" of other technologies. Which makes them cumbersome to use, not very eficient and not very good feature wise. Wireless mouses work 2feet away from the receaver. Keybards work through a PS2 connetor. Tv controlers are infa red not reall an Ideal wireless technology, phones and walkie tokies are probably as close as you get. And they all come in their own propitiatory formats. The bluetooth thing is supposed to offer you a infterface much like USB but wireless on which ALL appliances supporting it will be able to comunicate with each other. Anyways this is something where everythig in the wireless world is heading towards. I was thinking of making some cheap wireless appliances which would be compatible with this. As a first thing a wireless USB hub. Since 99% of the systems nowadays do support USB. This would enable all USB devices that exist to become wireless. It would also enable all computers that have been made in the last 2 years to support bluetooth technology. Think about the amount of money you can make from something like this? The Appliences which are supposed to support bluetooth are cell phones, palms, laptops, keyboards, mouses, cameras, stereo systems, beepers, whatever there is which is currently wireless is gonna jump on it to be compatible with each other. 802.11, on the other hand, has higher transmission speeds AND longer distance specifications. I've used 802.11 transceivers and they pretty much require you to have access to the good old 60 Hz line power we all know and love. It is also very hard to process a 12 Mbps datastream on a microcontroller that runs at any speed less than ~200 MHz (do the math). Even a custom IC or ASIC optimized for I/O processing would consume a fair amount of power processing such a datastream. Don't expect to see 802.11b on a handheld device unless it has access to line-power a significant amount of time or is a bastardized version of 802.11. The primary factor for Bluetooth's slow industry acceptance is the price. While it doesn't operate at 12 Mbps, it is significantly fast and, with its convoluted master-slave networking protocol, requires either a ton of engineering time or expensive "blackbox" transceivers. We are ready to adopt it as soon as a customer is willing to pay the price; so far, they've liked our custom solutions instead.