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Neither of these connection types are ideal for IoT applications.
#Laptop with wifi vs bluetooth Bluetooth#
Bluetooth was designed for creating personal area networks (PAN) between computing devices (laptops, smartphones) and various peripherals such as keyboards and headsets, typically over shorter distances than Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi was conceived to eliminate wires on LAN networks. This leaves us with three options: Bluetooth Classic, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).īluetooth Classic and Wi-Fi are the historic choices and supported by most smartphones, but were developed with rather specific use cases in mind. The technologies most ideal for IoT products must be usable by consumers out of the box and ideally with minimal setup. NFC is short range (<20 cm), not many smartphones support it, and also has low bandwidth. Cellular is not feasible due to the need to provision a SIM card and pay a subscription fee. IR was popular in flip phone days, but almost none of today's smartphones come with this option, mainly due to low bandwidth, short range, and a requirement that devices be positioned within line of sight of each other. Let's ignore three wireless communication technologies that are unsuitable to the majority of IoT applications: Infrared (IR), cellular connectivity, and Near Field Communications (NFC). What are the best existing technologies for enabling this wireless communication? How can developers of IoT devices and apps design products to be user-friendly? As wireless communication technologies have not quite caught up to the needs in IoT, the answer, unfortunately, is that it's complicated. As these devices become smarter and generate an ever increasing amount of data, the need to be controlled by or communicate with a mobile device presents some difficulties to developers. One thing these products have in common is that they communicate wirelessly with either a mobile device, the Internet, or both. Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are increasing in popularity and availability - think Amazon Alexa, smart thermostats & light bulbs, Internet-connected garage door openers, GoPro cameras, and so on.
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