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Industrial uses of Bluetooth will outstrip domestic - inventor

A working LEGO robot, controlled by a Bluetooth link from a hand-held computer, was demonstrated at CeBIT this week by a Swedish inventor - not of robots, but of industrial prototyping wireless gear.

"There are people with products which could easily be turned into wireless-enabled ones, who can't get the Bluetooth component designed," said Pelle Svensson of ConnectBlue in Sweden.

"We give them a simple serial port replacement device, and they can start testing and developing a wireless version of their existing industrial products."

The most sophisticated product the company does is also the simplest to use: it's the Web Enabler. This is a simple plug-in card which a circuit designer - say for a washing machine or a some industrial control box - can add to their current design.

To operate it, the designer opens up a standard Web browser, and accesses the HTML in the Web Enabler. "It turns your product into a device with a Web based user interface. You can create the user interface using standard HTML tools, and can the whole design can be accessed from a standard PC or PDA using Bluetooth wireless."

Pelle Svensson said that "we see Bluetooth as being very useful for one-to-many devices, in industrial areas."

The serial port adapter is a simple cable replacement for industrial applications; "Just unplug, and play replacing the serial cable with two adapters."

Examples of people who went this way would include Tool-Tribe. This company had a whiteboard product, connected to a PC. All they did was remove the serial cable link, and substitute the ConnectBlue serial port adapter for the serial cable. Another sample: Phoenix Contacts, which used an Ethernet Bridge, acting as a transparent link between two networks.

Svennson is the marketing director , - phone +46 40 6307 102.