Creative Connectivity

RF4CE – The wireless remote control that keeps coming back

The consumer electronics industry has always had something of a love-hate relationship with remote controls. It’s painful to design and ship a new remote control with every product, but attempts to come up with an interoperable standard have been plagued with problems. As a result our homes are littered with lost and unused remote controls. A few independent companies have tried to solve the problem by producing decent, but generally expensive universal controls, but they’re still a rarity around the home.

In the early days of remotes, the dominant technology was ultrasonic, but they’ve evolved to the point today that almost all use infra red (IR) transmitters. IR is cheap and directional; the latter feature being useful in a world where there is limited interoperability and interference can be mitigated by pointing the remote control in the right direction. However, it’s a one way connection, as keeping a photo diode alive to look for a signal coming back from the TV would decimate the battery life.

As the audio-video equipment we buy has become more sophisticated, manufacturers have been looking for an alternative technology that would allow low power, two-way communication between equipment and remote. The obvious solution is wireless, but the question is which one? A few years ago chip vendors who were looking for customers for their 802.15.4 radio ICs, decided to put together a standard to try and sell a few more of their chips. (802.15.4 is underlying radio standard used by ZigBee and other specialist wireless stacks, none of which are shipping in the volumes required to make chip manufacture very profitable.) That standard became known as RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) and was eventually embraced by the ZigBee Alliance. The Japanese AV industry bought the story and have recently begun shipping RF4CE handsets into their local market. As the volumes have ramped up, rumours are growing that an increasing number are being returned because they don’t work. It’s too early to be sure what the reason is, but when you delve into the detail of the RF4CE standard it looks a bit flaky. That could herald a golden opportunity for Bluetooth low energy, which is charging onto the remote control scene like a wireless knight in shining armour.

Unexpectedly Welcome Back – UWB

Mark Twain famously said (or almost said) “rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. Just when you thought it was safe to stay at home and live with slow speed wireless data transfer, UWB has performed a similar reincarnation, appearing to rise, Lazarus-like, from its grave with the announcement of two new chipsets from Samsung and CSR.

UWB has had a chequered history of ups and downs. Last year, when I started writing my book “Essentials of Short Range Wireless”, I planned a chapter on it as it seemed to be experiencing something of a renaissance. Half way through writing the book, a number of the key chip companies folded and I removed the chapter. It looks as if I may have acted prematurely.

Why the resurgence of interest? UWB has had a turbulent history, with many of the start-up companies supporting it going bust as the industry embarked on its love affair with ever faster variants of Wi-Fi. The answer comes back to the classic divide between the PC and mobile phone industries and the feature that separates them more than anything else: one has a power cord and the other doesn’t.

Social Media, Crowdsourced Reviews and the Edinburgh Festival

As usual, I spent the last few weeks of August at the Edinburgh Festival. For those who have never been to the Edinburgh Fringe, it’s billed as the world’s largest arts event. This year there were over 40,000 performances from 2,453 companies throughout the course of the month, selling over 2 million tickets. However, I think that’s only around 40% of the potential tickets that could be sold. As a result, throughout August, Edinburgh is consumed by a mad scramble of promotion, with companies handing out flyers, sticking posters all over the City and engaging in all manner of publicity stunts. This year I expected to see companies starting to use social media and mobile phone apps to help promote themselves. Sadly, few appeared to use these at even the most basic level.

2010 was the year when the Internet finally overtook the local press. For many years the main guide to what’s worth seeing has been the star ratings given by professional reviewers, notably from the Scotsman’s daily review section. Over the past few years a growing number of web based review sites have emerged, with reviews contributed by audience members (and quite often by cast members). As a result, anyone can post their own four or five star review, irrespective of the quality of the show, or their competence as a reviewer. So every company capable of performing a Google search has been able to plaster their posters and handbills with a five star review, even though they may have submitted it themselves. Seemingly unaware of the existence of the Internet, this triggered the Scotsman to pen a splenetic tirade about how people voicing their own opinion is devaluing the review process.

As someone who is working with emerging location based social networking, it was disappointing to see how little has emerged at the Festival. I came across no references to Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt, surprisingly limited use of Facebook and Twitter and no Bluetooth marketing. However, the growth of public reviews and the start of social media promotion by a few companies suggest that 2011 might be the year when things change and the position of the professional reviewer is finally undermined. So what happened this year, and what do companies need to do in the future?

Presence – the new location

There’s a subtle change about to happen to our mobile devices and the way we interact with them. Today everyone is excited about the use of GPS in mobile phones to inform them of where they are. That’s about to become old hat. GPS applications are an interim step in terms of the evolution of location based applications, albeit an immensely valuable one. But the more important concept is that of presence.

Presence is much more than just knowing where you are – it’s about communicating your presence with friends, the things around you and the web. It also provides the ability to use that knowledge to determine how your personal devices and applications work. Presence moves us from the paradigm of the traditional “You are here” sign, which applies to everyone in the area, to the far more personal concept of “I am here”. It’s the next step in social networking and interacting with the web. We’re already seeing the beginning of it with applications like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt, but they’re only the start, as new technologies will make it even easier to gain an awareness of and invoke conversation with our surroundings.

What’s the value of ZigBee?

Today NXP announced that it is acquiring Jennic, the UK based RF design company that specialises in ZigBee chips and stacks. That in itself is not surprising. The market for ZigBee silicon has been consolidating for some time, with the previous acquisitions of One RF, Chipcon and module vendor Meshnetics. It’s something that I predicted would happen last year. It’s good news for the design team at Jennic, as NXP should provide them with the scale to grow and a sales infrastructure and industry stature that increases their customer base.

However, one aspect of the deal is likely to send shockwaves through the industry. That’s the price tag for the acquisition, which is $12.2 million. Compare that to the value that TI paid for Chipcon in 2005, which was around $200 million.

ANT runs scared as Bluetooth low energy appears

It’s always interesting seeing how industries react to new entrants. ANT has been having a successful time in persuading sports and fitness manufacturers to use its standard for wireless connectivity. That’s partly because it does what it says on the tin and partly because it’s not had a lot of competition.

This week, following the launch of Bluetooth low energy, the FAQ on the ANT website makes the strange claim that once Bluetooth low energy becomes available in mobile phones, ANT devices can take advantage of a bridge in watches to talk to phones. It’s difficult to understand what, other than desperation at the advent of real competition, is driving them to say that. It’s like telling vegetarians that you have a cunning plan which will enable them to eat meat.