Painting the Internet of Things Blue

Maker News
A fitness tracker based on Rev B of blueIOT
A fitness tracker based on Rev B of BlueIOT

The deciding factor about what is going to be the next big thing isโ€”at least a lot of the timeโ€”whetherย that the technology has reachedย the point where itโ€™s useable by people other than the alpha geeks.

It appears that weโ€™ve reached that point for wearables, as the three factors that matter most when dealing with themโ€”size, battery life and communicationsโ€”are starting to converge towardsย the stage where the devicesย are not just possible, but usable. People have been predicting wearables would be the next big thing forย about as long as Iโ€™ve been involved in technology, but lately the predictions have becomeย louder and more frequent.

Don Colemanย talking at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014

However one of the factorsย that really making wearables possible is the growing popularity of Bluetooth Low Energy standard. While Bluetooth LEย has relatively low data ratesโ€”realistically you’ll probably get around 0.25MBit/s throughputโ€”but has been optimized for low power use, and designed to operate from simple lithium coin cell batteries, which makes it perfect for use in wearable devices.

Another advantage thatย Bluetooth LE has over its competition is that it doesn’t suffer from the “50% problem,” with support for the standard now available in both Android and iOS devices.

Tom Igoeย andย Don Colemanย give an overview of Bluetooth Low Energy.

It’s alsoย becoming a lot easierย to build your own Bluetooth LE devices using off the shelf boardsโ€”like Adafruit’s nRF8001 breakout boardโ€”and there are aย growing number of micro-controller platforms specificallyย aimed at the wearables market.ย There are alsoย a number of small boards, for instance the Light Blue Bean, that are well tailored for use in wearable devices.

Guido Burger talking at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014

Amongst these boards is the BlueIOTย which has come out of Fab-Lab Europeย and was first seen in the wild at Maker Faire Bay Area a couple of months ago.

First batch of BlueIoT wearbles before assembly
First batch of BlueIOT wearbles before assembly

Designed around an ATmega 328P the BlueIOTย is Arduino compatible and has an onboard accelerometer as well as UV andย barometricย sensorsโ€”there are also lots of examples showing how to use the board from TechBASIC and with Node Red. While it’s designed to go onto a breadboard, like the MetaWear, the BlueIOT is small enough to be worn and wearable projects to ย date include a smart watch and a open fitnessย tracker.

Which comes back to my point about technological maturity. Only a few years ago building something like a smart watch would have beenย impossible, now it’s something you can make yourself.

 

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Alasdair Allan is a scientist, author, hacker and tinkerer, who is spending a lot of his time thinking about the Internet of Things. In the past he has mesh networked the Moscone Center, caused a U.S. Senate hearing, and contributed to the detection of what wasโ€”at the timeโ€”the most distant object yet discovered.

View more articles by Alasdair Allan
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