Signature Q4 2008

Bluetooth Technology in Industry | Q4 ’08 years, Bluegiga has been Finland’s second-fastest-growing company, with 700 percent growth in the number of produced units and 1,000 percent increase in its number of customer projects. Revenue expectations in excess of US$10 million for 2008 represent an annual growth rate of more than 60 percent, according to Tom Nordman, Bluegiga’s co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing. “It looks like we can grow like this for the next ﬁve years easily, and I know there are other companies who are doing similar growth,” Nordman says. “For non-consumer markets, Bluetooth and how they can use it is new for them. These guys are just starting to put Bluetooth into their product lines heavily.” In manufacturing operations, the U.S. market has been slower to adopt the technology than the rest of the world, “but it’s becoming increasingly popular here,” says Ira Sharp, product marketing specialist for wireless communications with Phoenix Contact, a Middletown, Pa., company that produces components and systems for industrial device connection, automation, electronic interface and surge protection. Among the Phoenix Contact products helping to change that perception is the company’s line of DIN rail-mountable control systems for industrial control cabinets, where employees can plug in devices to change manufacturing parameters, do diagnostics or perhaps stop a malfunction. Because of the huge risk of electrical shock, employees opening a cabinet wear hot and bulky protective clothing. Using the industrial interface designed by Phoenix Contact – based on a Bluetooth wireless module produced by connectBlue, a wireless solutions provider with ofﬁces in Sweden and Chicago – workers can communicate with the cabinet’s electronics from a safe distance without requiring protective gear. A wireless link also eliminates the need for bulky cables and the cost of hardwiring a system. Even with the proven beneﬁts of safety, cost and convenience, reliability is really the driving force that brings Bluetooth technology to the factory ﬂoor, according to connectBlue President Pelle Svensson. “Mainly it’s the robustness,” he says. “We have huge motors turning on and off, welding machines, all kinds of potential (electronic) interference around. Bluetooth seems to be less sensitive to those kinds of interference due to the fact that it is a frequency-hopping radio with short data packets.” As pending versions of Bluetooth technology bring higher-speed data transfer and even lower power consumption, the advantages of the wireless protocol will become even more attractive, according to Bluegiga’s Tom Nordman. “Now we can expand to applications which have been lacking enough speed or power conservation,” says Nordman. “We feel here that this is an absolutely great direction where the technology is now heading.” Scanning Ahead The Shark Serial Adapter, by Stevens Water Monitoring Systems, makes nearly any testing or monitoring instrument Bluetooth enabled. Baracoda’s executive vice president, Christophe Dissaux. Last September, it introduced a device that reads RFID and bar codes in a single unit. “We’re talking with a French company that has developed an RFID tag for winemakers,” he says. “A temperature sensor attached to it measures the temperature the wine is exposed to every eight hours from the day the wine leaves the vineyard through distribution, shipping and ﬁnal stops at the other side of the world, to make sure the wine was properly kept during this three- to four-month period.” This ﬁeld of “assets tracking” is one of Baracoda’s major markets; another is “in-premise” scanning, mainly warehouse applications. Baracoda’s Class 1 SvcanWear reader, for example, has an autoscan feature and ﬁts on top of the hand, leaving it free so workers can carry items in pick-and-pack operations. “When you go out of the Bluetooth range, bar code readers can store up to 5,000 scans,” Dissaux says. “As soon as you get back in range they will transmit the scans that have been stored. It’s brought more freedom of use to the users.” And Dissaux likes that Bluetooth technology is an open technology compatible with all Windows- or Mac-based computers, phones or PDAs. Wireless Necessity Higher data speeds will interest industrial providers such as France’s Baracoda, which introduced Bluetooth enabled bar code scanners in 2003. This is especially true as “the auto ID” world begins replacing scanners with RFID chips. Baracoda was the ﬁrst to introduce a Bluetooth wireless RFID reader, says 20 | SIGnature | Bluetooth.org What’s more, some applications would be difﬁcult or impossible to develop with cables and wires. Three years ago, Stevens Water Monitoring Systems introduced its Shark RS232/RS485 Serial Adapter for Bluetooth wireless data transmission. Adam Krumbein, spokesman for the Portland, Ore.-based company, says the Shark is suitable for a range of applications – data loggers, medical equipment, test instruments and more – where simply attaching the Shark to a serial port makes an instrument Bluetooth enabled. But a key use of the Shark is in water monitoring systems, where corrosion, damage and “bio-fouling” make traditional wired hardware problematic. The Washington State Department of Ecology, for example, mounted sensors on navigational buoys in Willipa Bay to record water temperature, salinity and chlorophyll levels. Readings were taken every 15 minutes, with the data retrieved only once a month by boat. Now, Sharks installed on the buoys at water level permit instant transfer of data to shore by radios on top of the buoys; radios and sensors need no fragile wired connections that can be corroded or damaged. The State of Washington is one of a growing number of potential customers seeking out this kind of rugged solution. “The hardest part has been getting our customers educated on what Bluetooth is,” Krumbein says. “While Bluetooth has taken off in the consumer market, the industrial market hasn’t had nearly as many products taking advantage of it. But every customer we talk to comes up with these interesting applications for it that we haven’t even thought of.” Robert Ebisch writes about science and technology for publications including Popular Computing, Science Digest and Consumers Digest. http://www.Bluetooth.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Signature Q4 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.