BLE for Cable Replacement in AIDC

By: Stephanie Lubrano, Marketing Communications Specialist

EE Catalog recently featured an article written by Jonathan Kaye, Product Director of Laird Embedded Wireless Solutions. The article titled, Replace Cable Applications in Industrial Automation with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), focuses on the market sector Automatic Identification & Data Capture (AIDC). AIDC refers to the methods of automatically identifying objects, collecting data about them, and entering that data into computer systems with little or no human involvement. BLE is expected to play a huge role in the expansion of wireless enabled industrial automation and cable replacement.

The article explains what BLE is and how the technology is expanding very quickly, creating new areas of application for low-power wireless devices. According to ABI Research, cumulative shipments of BLE-enabled devices are expected to reach 30 billion devices by 2018. As BLE continues to expand into more markets, OEMs are looking to embed industrial devices like barcode scanners with BLE. Barcode scanners embedded with BLE are a great example in AIDC. They periodically send low volumes of data and need to operate on small batteries for extended periods of time. The article explains how an OEM can be up and running with a BLE-enabled barcode scanner in no time with the right BLE module.

BLE technology is expanding into new markets

Laird's smartBASIC programming language speeds industrial OEMs' implementation of BLE into their devices. To learn more about Laird's smartBASIC applications visit smartBASIC for BLE.

To read the full article and to learn more about the potential of BLE for cable replacement, click here.