Hello and Welcome to another episode of “Learn Technology in 5-minutes” from MAKERDEMY
and I'm Venkatesh the founder of Makerdemy
In this episode, we will learn about Bluetooth Low Energy or a BLE
the Bluetooth protocol for the Internet of Things.
We are very familiar with Bluetooth technology in our everyday life
We use it to stream audio to our car stereo, connect to our wireless headsets and so on
But what is this Bluetooth Low Energy? Well, you know what?
If you are using a fitness tracker or a smartwatch, it is most likely that you are using a Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE device
You can think of Bluetooth Low Energy as a low power Bluetooth designed for the Internet of Things
Now, as you all know, Bluetooth or to be more precise, Bluetooth Classic is a short-range personal area network wireless
technology that is used to transfer data and voice from one device to another.
But, here is something very important that you should know
Even though both Bluetooth classic and BLE are designed and marketed by the
Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the 2 technologies don’t interoperate
What that means is that you can’t get a BLE device to talk to a Bluetooth Classic device directly
But if you have a mobile phone, then you have a device that most likely has a dual-mode module that
can communicate with both BLE and Bluetooth classic devices and transfer data between both the protocols
You may ask, How is it possible for the BLE devices to consume significantly less power than the Bluetooth classic?
This is because the radio of the BLE device sleeps between transmissions. The radio transmits and goes back to sleep
And it is not just that, with BLE even the connection times are faster
This allows the BLE devices to sleep longer as they connect fast, transmit, disconnect and go back to sleep
Third, BLE transmits smaller packets, so that data is transmitted faster and the radio can go back to sleep fast
BLE was introduced in 2010 as part of the Bluetooth 4.0 specification
The BLE is a new technology that is designed for the IoT with
a very specific use case - to transmit small amounts of data at lower speeds while consuming very little energy
BLE operates at the 2.4 GHz ISM band, the same spectrum as the Bluetooth Classic
By now it should be clear that the BLE is not meant for
the typical use cases of Bluetooth Classic such as streaming audio or large files
Can you take a guess as to which use cases are ideal for the BLE?
Well, the BLE is ideal for wearable devices like fitness trackers, smartwatches, personal health care devices,
and home automation applications like smart locks and smart lighting
In BLE there are 2 types of devices - the peripheral device and the central device
The peripheral devices are typically constrained devices that need to conserve energy
The central device is typically the device with more processing power and memory where much of the processing gets done
For example, your fitness tracker is the peripheral device and your mobile phone that syncs with your
fitness tracker is the central device that processes and displays the data in a dashboard for you to view
That is all from me in this video, folks
