What Even is Bluetooth?

2024-03-20 | By Antonio Velasco

Everybody's heard of it, and practically everybody's using it. In your phones, AirPods, and speakers, Bluetooth reigns supreme. It's known as a connection that allows devices to pair, but in actuality, what is it? Why is it even called Bluetooth? And what makes it unique as opposed to different connection protocols. Today, we'll dive into these questions and more concerning this household name.

The Origins of Bluetooth

Let's first talk about the origin of the word Bluetooth. This wireless communication technology is named after an old Danish king called Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson. The reason why we refer to our short-distance communication technology today as Bluetooth has to do with the king's historical reign--in which he sought to "unite" all the tribes within his Kingdom. Bluetooth aims to do a similar thing--except with technological standards.

You might also be wondering why they chose a Danish King's conquest when many more rulers did similar things. This is because the engineer who worked on Bluetooth loved Scandinavian culture. In technology, the inventor, having done the work, gets to name it whatever they want. Maybe one day I'll get to name my own protocol based on my Star Wars interests.

Anyway, back to Bluetooth! It was highly sought after in order to meet the demand for devices to communicate without needing a robust framework. With the growing amount of user devices, it can get increasingly difficult to make a protocol for them to communicate without a universal standard.

How Does Bluetooth Work?

As such, Bluetooth was invented. Meant specifically for short-range communication, it operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range and takes advantage of the frequency-hopping spread spectrum to prevent interference. This is especially important today where we typically will have thousands and thousands of devices within a close vicinity that can connect through Bluetooth.

What Even is Bluetooth?

The Bluetooth modules on each of the devices will operate within the same frequency range, but to connect it securely, they will often communicate to each other through a pairing process. Each module will emit a specific PIN/key, which will allow it to pair with another device specifically. Often times they'll also need to be authenticated through a code from the user as well.

There is also a greater deal of security through the random frequency hopping mechanism, which will not only prevent interference as it will hop often, but also provide more security. Each Bluetooth module is coordinated with the other to hop at the exact same time.

So, Why Bluetooth?

Bluetooth is extremely popular today because of the security features mentioned and its extremely low power consumption. Usually, it takes a lot of energy for devices to communicate. You might notice that when your phone is in airplane mode, its battery goes down a lot slower than it typically would outside of airplane mode. Bluetooth doesn't use as much power, mainly because the communication waves don't need to be sent very far. Furthermore, it is a very low-latency communication method.

Also, since we've "united" the tribes, this universal standard makes practically every device compatible. I can even use my AirPods with my Windows computer--simply because both operate through Bluetooth!

How Can I Use Bluetooth in My Projects?

Microcontrollers, especially for IoT projects, usually require a connection to operate. There are microcontrollers with Wi-Fi modules, but these can get pretty expensive. Bluetooth microcontrollers prove to be a reliable, low-cost, and low-latency alternative. Pairing allows for a secure and fast connection between your projects. This makes it great for home automation projects or even for mobile apps since phones already have that built-in Bluetooth integration.

One specific example could be with a Weather Station! I talk about one that I made in my DHT11 blog.

What Even is Bluetooth?

You could easily use Bluetooth to transmit data back to a central source and compile it all. As long as it’s a device with Bluetooth, you're golden.

Overall, Bluetooth is an extremely cool technology that we often overlook because of how common it is. There are a lot of benefits to it, and it's really awesome how every company has agreed to utilize this standard. Innovations---and universal ones at that---like this improve our society tenfold.