Bluetooth Tutorial

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Bluetooth Tutorial
Bluetooth is a very common buzzword used in computer and electronics Industry. In this tutorial let us see what is bluetooth and what are the features of bluetooth.

What is Bluetooth?

Bluetooth is a technology which uses Radio Frequency to connect different computer equipments and telecommmunication devices and transfer voice and data between them. Bluetooth operates at 2.4 Ghz frequency. We connect devices that support bluetooth and talk or send data. Bluetooth plays an important role in wireless technologies. You may wonder how the name bluetooth came about. A king named 'Herald Bluetooth Blaatand' integrated Denmark and Norway countries together. Therefore, the technology that connects various devices was named after this king.

Is WiFi and Bluetooth Same?

No. Both are wireless technologies. Both are related to computers. However they both differ in many ways. Computer, Cellphone, PDAs, headsets etc can be connected using bluetooth. Bluetooth is used to connect devices that are near to each other. Bluetooth consumes very less power. Whereas WiFi is used to connect computers, notebooks and PDAs that are far from or near to each other.

What is the distance required between two bluetooth devices?

Bluetooth devices should be within less than 10 meters (32 feet) apart to connect to each other. There are also high power bluetooth devices that can operate upto 100 meter distance. But these high power bluetooth devices are expensive. For normal home users the normal 10 meter distance is more than enough.

What is the speed of bluetooth?

Two bluetooth devices transfer data upto 1MBPS speed between them. But in reality you maynot get this 1MBPS speed. Normally you will get speed upto 721 KBPS. Is the data transfer in bluetooth secure? Bluetooth uses Frequency hopping. Furthermore the data is encrypted. Hence the data is fully secure in bluetooth.

How many devices can be connected in bluetooth?

Consider Bluetooth 1.0 and Bluetooth 1.1 standards. Using Bluetooth 1.0 based devices you can connect only one device to another device. But using Bluetooth 1.1 based devices, one device can connect to eight other bluetooth devices simultaneously.

What are the different types of Bluetooth devices?

Mobile phones, Notebook computers, Printers, PDAs are some of the bluetooth enabled devices. Many manufacturers including Nokia, IBM, Ericsson, Toshiba, 3 Com, Intel, Motorola produce bluetooth devices.

Bluetooth Frequency Interference.

Bluetooth operates in 2.4 Ghz frequency. Microwave oven, Cordless telephone are other devices that use the same 2.4 Ghz frequency. Moreover 802.11b, 802.11g Wi-Fi standards also use the same 2.4 Ghz frequency. By right there will not be any interference from these other devices though they are using the same frequency. This is because bluetooth uses frequency hopping and Direct Sequence Spreading methods. However it is advisable to keep these devices atleast 10 meters apart from bluetooth devices.

How to use Bluetooth?

Most of the latest mobile phones are bluetooth enabled. Normally to turn it on you need to turn on bluetooth using your phone's manual since it may differ in various models of phones.

You can get bluetooth cards and connect to your computer. Or buy a USB or PCMCIA bluetooth card and connect it to your notebook. Now just give a name to each of your bluetooth device and then using your bluetooth utility scan for nearest bluetooth devices to connect to. Once you find the bluetooth device to connect to just select it and connect and then you can start to transfer data files between them.

You can read more tutorials on bluetooth here and tutorials on wifi here.