Headworx

Despite some early growing pains , USB Type-C is a winner. USB, as we know it mostly today, is 22 years old. Pretty mature. Even considering the accelerated pace of development of new technologies, I am sure Type-C will last until 2040 and will be in use by 2050. The thing illustrated here is a combo USB drive by Kingston. It is a classic USB on one side and Type-C on the other, making file transfer between systems dead fast and easy. This ultra-tiny piece of hardware has 128GB capacity and works with everything, including iPhone 8. This is probably the best news for all of us: Apple dropping Lightning and adopting USB Type-C . This tiny connector is reversible (like Lightning) but is much more versatile, capable of carrying signals like high definition video. It also carries almost unbelievable (for its size) amount of power: up to 100W (remember: the original USB could do 2.5W). So essentially it becomes the ONLY connector any portable device (laptop, tablet, phone) needs. It i...

Almost exactly a year ago Skip Ashton published a blog that looked both promising and scary. Promising, because we really need a standard that covers such simple things like switches and light bulbs. Scary, because at that time I knew Bluetooth Mesh would still have a long way to go until being officially adopted. Now a year has passed and nothing happened. ZigBee released their Draft of Revision 6 of the Cluster Library specification . Google started their baby steps with Weave Schemas and the merged OCF started the oneIoTa Data Model . Unfortunately none of these brings any meaningful change to the landscape. After a more serious look at each of these the conclusion is obvious: these efforts are very immature. Let's take the light bulb example. Both Weave and OCF don't specify a dimming curve. They just say you tell a bulb a non-zero value and it starts emitting light. But actually how much light - nobody knows. ZigBee goes a little further - they actually do have a d...

This week has been full of Bluetooth. The 5 is out. It's been a long wait. Not really wait but countless hours of brainstorming, design, tuning, test specification development. Now Bluetooth SIG estimates we will wait between 2 to 6 months until the first Bluetooth 5 products hit the market. We are somehow used to an 18-month mobile phone replacement cycle, but technology does not run THAT fast. Let's face it: what is the real difference between iPhone 6 and 7? Significantly smaller than between Bluetooth 4 and 5. It just takes time to develop a global leading standard. Now speaking of standards and implementations, I just can't help commenting on how big the gap can be. Bluetooth 4, with the LE subsystem, was released in 2010. Today, almost 7 years later, a flagship Google device - the Pixel C is not capable of running a stable Bluetooth connection with its keyboard. And Apple is still struggling with synchronizing timing of a stereo sound between a left and a wirele...

The Lufthansa strike brought a series of headaches to my travel schedules. I admit it's been a while since the lat major disruption (see the Volcanic Panic post). Unfortunately very little has changed on the IT technology front since then. I spent again several hours on a phone waiting in line for "the next available agent". The case seems simple. I'd expect logging to the portal of the airline that is experiencing service interruptions and being presented with available options. Exactly what an agent offers me on a call after the long wait. Unfortunately this is not the case. It is still humans doing the tedious work that computers could easily handle, given a relatively simple set of rules. Interestingly the same applies to online travel agents, such as Expedia. Most of flight modifications and cancellations has to be done via call center agents. Long waits. Long talks. Still no app for that.

Last week's Strategies in Light Europe, colocated with Lux Live 2016 , brought fierce discussions on the future of wireless lighting. One very evident trend was Bluetooth Low Energy, showcased by several companies (including us), each proposing their proprietary mesh network based on the Bluetooth LE standard. The voice of the lighting industry has been clear: "Give us an interoperable, full stack solution that works. Wireless audio has had it for years. Why wireless lighting cannot have the same?". Could not agree more, and believe me, this is my personal priority, leading the Bluetooth Mesh Working Group: unite and deliver. It is also our mission at Silvair : make wireless lighting fly! And we know and completely understand why a full stack, open, standards - compliant solution is the only answer. I have been repeating this for years, stressing the importance of the application layer, as well as the " Layer-0 ". Yes, the full stack is 8 layers, not 7. ...

Grab your smartphone and (provided you're using a Chrome on Android or Safari on iOS) open this link: https://www.panomoments.com/m/grand-central . It is a pretty jaw dropping experience, how - what seems to be - a simple web image reacts to movements of the mobile device. Immediately you can envision how being able to capture such panoramas would become the future of personal photography. PanoMoments plans to offer both the hardware and software to make this happen. I have to say this is one of the most exciting Kickstarter campaigns I've come across this year. Considering my recent fascination with wide angle lens and encouraged by the on-time delivery and great performance of the Zero-D 12mm Laowa lens, it didn't take me too much time to decide on backing this project. Startups seem to be driving the innovation in prosumer photography space through Kickstarter. PanoMoments - if it delivers - not only on the hardware side, but also on the software end (much more...

One of the unintended consequences of [Apple] dropping the 3.5mm headphone jack may be an increased adoption of Bluetooth beacons. For beacons to be effective, phones need to have Bluetooth enabled. Which still many users don't do. Either because they don't have a reason or because they believe it eats battery fast (the latter is a habit from the Nokia 6310 times, when phones lasted for a week and has virtually no effect today). When an audio jack is no longer available and other wired options are still not compatible (Lightning on iPhones and USB Type-C elsewhere), many users will bet on the only safe and prevailing wireless audio standard: Bluetooth. More Bluetooth audio accessories will cause more Bluetooth adapters turned on permanently, opening more opportunities for beacons. It looks like smartphones are firmly settling now on three radios: cellular (for outdoor), WiFi (for indoor data streaming) and Bluetooth (for all kinds of accessories and IoT). Bluetooth clearl...