Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances using 2.400 to 2.485 GHz. It is mainly used for personal area networks (PANs).
To use Bluetooth wireless technology, a device must be able to interpret certain Bluetooth profiles, which define the possible applications and specify general behaviors. There are a wide range of Bluetooth profiles that describe many different types of applications. The most common ones are for wireless connection of headphones and speakers, connectivity of keyboards and mice to computers and connection of devices to Smartphones.
In recent times, Bluetooth has become much more relevant to the smart home with the advent of Bluetooth mesh networking. A Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) established a new Smart Home Subgroup in response to the growing number of OEMs looking to adopt Bluetooth mesh networking as the communications protocol for their smart home solutions.
At CES 2019 Bluetooth Mesh was announced as the next big home-automation standard, with new Smart Home SIG and application-layer development, backed by Xiaomi, Alibaba and 60 other IoT companies. As popular as it is, Bluetooth doesn't have a home-automation application layer in its communications stack. Those who uses Bluetooth for smart-home devices have to invent their own methods of communicating, meaning a Bluetooth keyboard has no way of interactiong with a Blutooth light bulb, or knowing what it is evenb capable of. Bluetooth is now writing these device definitions and developing a communications scheme through a new Smart Home subgroup of the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group).
Is this a good thing? Possibly. Bluetooth Mesh is not very power efficient, certainly not as good as ZigBee or Z-Wave. This is just another 'land grab' attempt, in a market that has clearly shown that interoperability is what's required, not another archipelago of functionality. We see this as just another technology option in our hybrid technology smart home.
