600 km! Humans have successfully achieved "Bluetooth in the sky" to receive signals from space.
In the past, Bluetooth was only based on short-range communication, but now it can be connected directly to satellites. These 600 kilometers are equivalent to the distance from London to Paris and from New York to Boston.
Behind this feat is a startup called Hubble Network (Hubble for short). Last year, it raised $20 million in Series A funding from investment institutions, including Y Combinator.
In March, they hitchhiked on SpaceX's Transporter-10 mission to put two satellites into orbit for the first time. Since then, the company has confirmed that it has successfully received signals from a 3.5mm Bluetooth chip more than 600 kilometers away.
In this regard, netizens congratulated one after another and said that it had changed the rules of the game.
Connect to satellites with Bluetooth
In our daily lives, we use Bluetooth for short-range communication tasks, such as connecting devices, sharing files, making calls, listening to songs, etc.
The communication range of the first generation Bluetooth was very limited, with a maximum distance of only 30 feet (76 cm); Now it can reach more than 200 feet (about 61 meters) under actual conditions.
Hubble has been able to extend this range even further, successfully establishing a Bluetooth connection from Earth to space.
In 2021, Hubble was founded by Life360 co-founder Alex Haro, Iotera founder Ben Wild, and aerospace engineer John Kim, who came up with the idea of "connecting Bluetooth chips to satellites" at that time.
This does sound a bit crazy, after all, like consumer electronics, it is also difficult to connect to other Bluetooth devices that are tens of meters away.
But the need does exist, and they think it's a real need.
The company says IoT devices now consume a lot of power, have high operating costs, and lack global connectivity. These are the basic limitations associated with Bluetooth devices today, and they prevent many industries from leveraging IoT to do business.
With nearly 5 billion Bluetooth devices currently sold each year, the potential market is huge if global connectivity is achieved in line with Hubble's vision.
Hubble's first innovation was the development of software that would enable off-the-shelf Bluetooth chips to communicate over ultra-long distances with low power consumption.
To do this, they also obtained a patent for a phased array antenna that can be launched on small satellites. It works like a magnifying glass, and it's what makes the off-the-shelf Bluetooth chip communicate with Hubble's satellites.
The team must also address the problems associated with Doppler, namely the frequency mismatch that occurs between fast-moving objects that exchange data via radio waves.
Netizen: The field of the Internet of Things will show parabolic development
On March 4 of this year, they successfully launched two satellites and began building their own satellite network, and then planned to add two more satellites by early next year and 32 more by the first quarter of 2026.
In this way, 36 satellites make up a satellite constellation, and they will be able to connect with the Hubble satellites for about two to three hours a day from anywhere in the world -
By simply updating the software, you can connect a standard Bluetooth device to a satellite network without the need for cellular reception.
According to reports, any Bluetooth-enabled device can connect to their satellite network, which can achieve global coverage. At the same time, battery consumption has been reduced to 1/20 of the original and operating costs have been reduced to 1/50th of the original level.
Currently known uses include markets such as logistics, herd tracking, pet smart collars, children's GPS watches, automotive inventory, construction sites, and soil temperature monitoring. This is especially true for industries that are in dire need of network coverage, such as remote asset monitoring in the oil and gas industry.
As the constellation scales, Hubble will turn its attention to industries that may require more frequent updates, such as soil monitoring, and continuous coverage use cases, such as fall monitoring for the elderly.
Once up and running, customers can simply integrate their device's chipset with the firmware to connect with the Hubble satellite network.
For this reason, some netizens predict that the field of the Internet of Things will show parabolic development, which is expected to increase to more than 25 billion by 2025.
Some netizens compared with their own experiences: I can't even use AirPods to connect to my mobile phone, and now they can connect to satellites???
Reference Links:
[1]https://www.techradar.com/pro/tech-startup-connects-to-two-satellites-in-orbit-from-earth-via-bluetooth-using-off-the-shelf-chip-and-a-software-update
[2]https://hubblenetwork.com/
[3]https://twitter.com/hubble_network/status/1786124914124075313/quotes
[4]https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/02/hubble-network-connects-a-bluetooth-chip-to-a-satellite-for-the-first-time/
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