Bluetooth is everywhere today. You cannot wander through the aisles of an electronics store and not see it attached to the most innovative, weird use you could ever thought of. In this short essay, we’ll describe what Bluetooth is, and a couple of the more traditional (although still innovative) uses for the technology.

Bluetooth is the name of a tenth century King of Denmark. It’s also the name for a wireless standard. That wireless standard is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) – a not-for-profit industry association with thousands of members. This group manages and maintains both the technical and the marketing of the Bluetooth trademark – only groups that adhere to both can use the Bluetooth logo.

Bluetooth defines a Personal Area Network or a PAN. This network has a radius of a few inches to a few feet – think of it as a wireless replacement for a cable. Actually, that’s what kicked off the whole thing – it was originally developed as a replacement for the RS-232 cable! This PAN can be made up of up to eight devices – one of which has to be the “master” – the other seven being “slaves”. They are “paired” with each other in a one-time manual process that ensures that only the devices you choose are on your particular network. The devices all communicate with the “master” in a round robin arrangement at very high speed (you’d never notice). Typical uses for Bluetooth would be an earpiece for a cellphone or mouse for a laptop computer (note that almost all laptops come with Bluetooth capability now). Slightly more innovative uses for the technology would include the Bluetooth GPS Receiver, where the GPS device acts like a speaker and microphone for you “paired” cell phone, or the FM Bluetooth Transmitter, where it is again “paired” with your cell phone or MP3 player, and uses the car’s FM radio as a speaker!

Now you know a little bit about Bluetooth. For more detail – search Wikipedia – there’s tons of information there!