Thursday 12th December 2002

Bluetooth in Cars

Connectivity overload or the next big thing?

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[v8thunder]

Anything that pinpoints your car's location and can be tracked from outside sources can never be a good thing unless it's Tracker, or something similar.

[PetrolTed]

Ah come on. What are you afraid of?

There's an opportunity here to have some genuinely useful information streaming into your car.

[plotloss]

Yep I reckon this is a good move.

Within 3 years chances are that you will have a 3G phone, so even if they cant find your car they will be able to find you as thats a feature of 3G.

Theres most definately gold in them thar hills, its just thinking of a decent application thats stumping me at the moment!

Matt.

[Podie]

If you've got a mobile that's turned on, they can ocate which "cell" you ar ein anyway... some cells are big (in the countryside) whilst others can be as small as 5 metres square (city)...

[PetrolTed]

Trafficmaster are busy tracking everyone's cars around the country anyway. Supposedly they throw away one digit of your number plate after they've read it but I wouldn't be surprised if that only happens after MI5 have taken a note of it

As Plotloss says, there's a kill app there somewhere...

[joust]

See the following for some "rants" about traffic master and it's security (or not)

www.spy.org.uk/trafficmaster.htm
www.cvni.net/radio/e2k/e2k04article.html
www.truthwars.com/php/bluepole.php
www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4143807,00.html

etc. etc.

[joust]

Podie said: If you've got a mobile that's turned on, they can ocate which "cell" you ar ein anyway... some cells are big (in the countryside) whilst others can be as small as 5 metres square (city)...

Much closer than that nowdays. Mobiles work by working out the distance between the cell and the mobile so that it only transmits in the required "slot", allowing other mobiles on the same frequency to use different slots.

Consequently, as most mobile antennas are sectored - you can find the direction and distance. Some of the technology that I seen finds you to within 100m to *50m* of where you are from 1 cell.

Further enhancements are happening to use nearby cells that know your phone is there but ignore it because it's chosen another cell. By correlating the two distances you can find people within 5m. Add that to multipath analysis and you can work out where almost anyone is.

Oh - and remember that you phone constantly keeps in touch with the base station - so you can actually watch people walking around.

If you want to know more see E-911 stuff from the states (www.uswcorp.com/USWCMainPages/our.htm is just one solution)

J

[speed12]

Slightly different topic, but not sure it is the worlds first - got my BMW last month and it has a bluetooth connection.

[steve-p]

Bluetooth is relatively slow and has a poor range, which is why it is being trounced by 802.11b in the wireless networking stakes. This is just a marketing gimmick. How many people want to use a laptop in their car? On the basis that the majority of car journeys only have one occupant, very few.

[Gibo993]

It may be being trounced by 802.11, but the 802.11 transmitter has to be connected directly (by a wire) to a WAN.
With blutooth you can connect through a mobile phone and use this as a modem to connect to the internet and then through vpn to a corporate network. This will work anywhere in the world where a GSM mobile will work.
I use Bluetooth heavily at work and use it all round europe to access my mail and network back in the UK.
The Phone acts as a 'gateway' to the internet and creates a 10m wide wirless network around it.
With in the car thats mean you can have several different divices all using your phone or GSMGPRS device as a modem.
Its difficult to expalin until you see it in practice, A lot of poeple in the US see it as a Gimmick as they do not understand the concept and freedom it gives.

I don't sell bluetooth products, just use it for many applications