Headworx

Back in 2018 I commented on LinkedIn that [short range, low power] wireless war was over and Bluetooth won. At that time this true statement of fact could not have been backed by hard data points. So the technology supremacy debate has continued and is still active. But to me that was obvious then. Partially based on the fundamental physical characteristics of Bluetooth LE, such as speed, power consumption, spectral efficiency - each being superior to any competing technology. Partially based on the allocation of frequency bands, where, again, Bluetooth offers much more and is globally unified. Partially due to direct connectivity to phones and tablets that Bluetooth allows for, creating the simplest, most streamlined user experience. And partially because Bluetooth is all on fire, when long term evolution is considered. People who are not inside this development tend to judge the situation by looking in a rear view mirror. "Bluetooth has never been used to control lighting sy

Mobile data while roaming is both salvation and a nightmare. It helps a lot from the moment you touch down at a new place. But due to astronomically high roaming charges, travelers very often fear to turn it on, trying to rely on sporadic open WiFi hotspots. Companies like Truphone have solved most of that already. I have been using Truphone for 5 years now , with a great success. But most is not all and even Truphone with its global plan covering more than 100 countries, while covering "most", they still do not cover them all. Fortunately, there are several companies addressing the roaming data problem. When planning my recent trip to Kazakhstan, I decided to go with Skyroam , selecting their Solis device. The idea is simple: it is a personal WiFi access point that magically links to the cloud in a way that costs you around 8 EUR per 24 hours. And you can connect multiple devices. I selected the Solis for two reasons. One was the battery lifetime, advertised to be

I've moved completely to USB-C and I really do like it. Small connectors, universal cables. All in all a huge reduction of bulk. I am down to 2 power bricks - the big Apple 87W and the small Anker 30W. And three cables: the long 2m Apple to power the Macbook, a shorter and lighter 1m (also Apple) to use with the small Anker charger and a short 50cm SuperSpeed (10GBps) do connect to backup drives or hook up an iPad as a second screen to the MacBook that runs Windows 10. At some point I was even looking to replace the big 87W Apple power supply with a different one that would have two USB-C outputs, but after weighing the options I decided to get the 30W Anker Atom-1. It is very small and very powerful an in many cases (like on a plane) the small brick is way more convenient to handle. With that, all new gear purchasing decisions have USB-C charging at the top of the checklist. Which - it turns out - is not enough. Recently I've pulled the trigger on the Skyroam's Sol

One of the key features that has made Uber so popular is transparency. Taxis have always been the big unknown and one of the most probable service to rip people off. And that includes the premium authorized taxi services at airports worldwide, where the ripoff is simply the premium tariff. Before Uber, you never knew how much a ride would cost. That all changed and the taxi industry is slowly realizing that with applications like myTaxi bringing that transparency via their apps. But still when you simply grab a taxi at an airport, you never know. I would say, whenever there is no transparency, there is potentially a ripoff is lurking... or there is something wrong with the service itself. Healthcare services being probably the most prominent example. I wrote about this a few weeks ago . The snake bite story . And my own dog bite one to confirm the case. When I was admitted to the emergency room, I had no clue what procedures they wanted to perform (and they performed two differen

Two weeks ago I attended a training for installers of lighting control systems. The training was great but really what struck me was that nobody said nothing about security of these systems. And nobody has ever explained the basic threats and the ABC of how to protect against them. When designing security for Bluetooth mesh, we have been paying a lot of attention not to overlook any potential attach surface,. This was - I'd say - close to 80% of the overall effort when architecting the specification - to have the security right. Designed for success. When you're not successful, nobody cares. When you are, you are also a target. We've gone to the extend of covering it all - device onboarding, authentication, layers, roles, device blacklisting ad protection against variety of really sophisticated attacks. But there have been a couple of very simple fundamental rules. Among them, the #1 rune has been: No fixed passwords. Which is still not the case today with so man