Chapter 7. Going Further

"I'm still learning"

- Michelangelo (at the age of 87)

This chapter will be the conclusion of the journey which we started six chapters back. We will be covering the following topics in this chapter to enhance your knowledge about Bluetooth 5, which is the latest release by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG):

• Bluetooth 5
• Practical Use Cases
• Future of BLE
• Future of IoT

Moving further in this chapter, we will be introducing various practical use cases of IoT built using Bluetooth Low Energy, which are already being used by people in their day-to-day lives. These cases will give you a bird's-eye view of Bluetooth Low Energy applications with respect to IoT in different domains.

Eventually, we will discuss what the future holds for BLE and IoT, and we shall conclude by consolidating what we have learned so far.

Bluetooth 5

Bluetooth 5 was announced by the Bluetooth SIG on June 16, 2016 to be arriving in late 2016, and it was finally officially unveiled on December 7, 2016. As per the initial advertisement, it was announced to have "Quadruple the range of its predecessor, double the speed, and 8 times the broadcasting capacity," for low energy connections.

Let's examine each of the factors one by one so that we can understand the practical implications of each of them.

8 Times the Broadcasting Capacity

Currently, Bluetooth Low Energy (4.2) offers advertising packet sizes of 31 bytes and BLE 5 allows this to increase by a factor of eight, that is, the broadcasting capacity of a BLE 5 device would be 255 bytes.

To understand this better, let's perform a small experiment. In Chapter 5, Beacons with Raspberry Pi, we configured our Raspberry Pi to broadcast a URL as an Eddystone Beacon. We shall repeat the same experiment here, however, with a little twist.

In terms of the setup, this time, instead of the...

Practical Use Cases

We have already seen BLE plus IoT use cases around Beacons and fitness trackers. In the following section, we cover some more practical usages/use cases of Bluetooth Low Energy-based IoT solutions, which are being deployed across various domains.

Philips Sonicare Toothbrush

The use case of Philips Sonicare Toothbrush presents a scenario where Bluetooth Low Energy together with IoT is helping to improve the oral health of individuals. Philips is a well-known Dutch company, which has primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare, and lighting. Sonicare is the brand name of an electronic toothbrush produced by Philips.

Figure 6: Philips Sonicare Toothbrush; source: image.philips.com

As shown in the preceding image, the Philips Sonicare toothbrush has a thick handle which contains the following sensors:

• Motion detector gyroscope
• Accelerometer
• Pressure sensor
• Scrubbing detector

Bundled with the toothbrush is an app, available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Note...

Future of BLE

We have already outlined the various features of Bluetooth Low Energy 5 in the previous section, which add a significant improvement over Bluetooth Low Energy 4.2, especially in terms of range and speed. With these new improvements and promises, we will be seeing Bluetooth Low Energy penetrating more and more into our daily lives.

In this section, we will discuss a few of the products and technologies, based on Bluetooth Low Energy, that are under active development and expected to arrive in the consumer market soon.

Dreem

Dreem is a sleep solution by a company called Rhythm. Dreem intends to help users to sleep better:

Figure 15: Dreem by Rhythm; source: www.dreem.com

At its very core, Dreem is a wearable headband, which the user can wear while sleeping. The headband monitors and analyses users' sleep cycles.

Note

To know more about Dreem, visit https://dreem.com/.

However, note that monitoring sleep is not the USP of this product, since sleep monitoring has already existed for a...

Future of IoT

Throughout this book, we have been discussing IoT in the light of Bluetooth Low Energy. In this section, we shall take a break from that and introduce other important technologies that IoT relies on apart from Bluetooth Low Energy. Eventually, we shall see some practical examples/applications/products that do not use Bluetooth Low Energy but play a major role in the IoT revolution.

Other Technologies

Although Bluetooth Low Energy is the cornerstone of IoT, it is, however,not the only cornerstone. Apart from Bluetooth Low Energy, IoT implementations as involve several other technologies which are worth mentioning:

1. Zigbee: Zigbee is a suite of communication protocols which are ideal for creating small personal area networks with low power digital radios, achieving transmission distances of 10-100 meters via line of sight communication. Zigbee has a defined data rate of 250 Kbps. These specifications make it ideal for home automation and low bandwidth needs. One of the popular use...

Summary

If you consider why computers exist at all, it is to translate our human experience in the physical world to a virtual experience in the digital one. If computer vision algorithms are akin to making a computer "see," then BLE provides a way to both speak and feel between devices. Look around you at the inanimate objects in your home. Let your imagination run wild. "What would that object say to me if it could speak?" A houseplant might tell you its soil is dry. The dog food bowl might tell you it's empty. As the author of this book, I hope I've done my part to get you started and show you some possibilities. The rest is up to you.

This brings us to the conclusion of the final chapter of this book. We started this journey with a formal introduction to Bluetooth Low Energy in the light of IoT, continuing by designing BLE plus IoT apps for various sensors, Beacons, and fitness trackers. In this chapter, we tried to introduce various practical applications and examples to make you aware...