Mohammad Afaneh is the founder of Novel Bits. He talked with TechRepublic’s Alison DeNisco Rayome at the Indiana IoT Lab, where the company has an office, to discuss why he believes IoT developers should consider bluetooth technology.
Mohammad Afaneh: So, Bluetooth Low Energy Technology is a low power wireless technology that’s used for connecting devices with each other and usually it’s very prevalent in smartphones, where you can connect to a device from your smartphone and control it and does not require being around a Wi-Fi network, when you’re in a rural area, you can connect with a device and being able to control that device remotely.
So, Bluetooth Low Energy Technology is a low power wireless technology that’s used for connecting devices with each other and one of the most important aspects of Bluetooth Low Energy when compared to other low power wireless technologies, such as Zigbee or Z-Wave, is that it exists in most smartphones in the market. So, it makes it easier to interface with that through a smartphone app.
IoT, or internet of things, developers would be very interested in learning more about Bluetooth Low Energy, for example because it’s existent in most smartphones in the market, it has the lowest power wireless technology out there, it’s one of the most low power technologies, as well as being able to develop it in a very rapid way. It’s easy to understand, it’s faster to learn. One of the advantages also is that the specification is free to access and developers can learn to use it, for free, by navigating the resources that are available from the Bluetooth SIG, which is the special interest group, the body that governs the Bluetooth standard.
There are many resources for developers looking to learn Bluetooth low energy and how to develop for that technology. There are a few videos on YouTube, which I actually have produced myself in partnership with a company that’s a major player in this space. They provide a tool that’s used by companies developing Bluetooth Low Energy Technology devices and so YouTube is a good place to start when you want to learn the basics of the technology. In addition to that there are a few books out there, that talk about the technology, the basics and how to develop for it. There’s also websites where people ask questions such as Stack Overflow, stack engineering, I believe it’s called also … has a lot of questions that come from people asking about that technology and that’s a good place where developers can learn a lot about this technology.
