Hubble Network Makes Bluetooth Connection With a Satellite For the First Time 83
Aria Alamalhodaei reports via TechCrunch: Hubble Network has become the first company in history to establish a Bluetooth connection directly to a satellite -- a critical technology validation for the company, potentially opening the door to connecting millions more devices anywhere in the world. The Seattle-based startup launched its first two satellites to orbit on SpaceX's Transporter-10 ride-share mission in March; since that time, the company confirmed that it has received signals from the onboard 3.5mm Bluetooth chips from over 600 kilometers away.
The sky is truly the limit for space-enabled Bluetooth devices: the startup says its technology can be used in markets including logistics, cattle tracking, smart collars for pets, GPS watches for kids, car inventory, construction sites, and soil temperature monitoring. Haro said the low-hanging fruit is those industries that are desperate for network coverage even once per day, like remote asset monitoring for the oil and gas industry. As the constellation scales, Hubble will turn its attention to sectors that may need more frequent updates, like soil monitoring, to continuous coverage use cases like fall monitoring for the elderly. Once its up and running, a customer would simply need to integrate their devices' chipsets with a piece of firmware to enable connection to Hubble's network.
The sky is truly the limit for space-enabled Bluetooth devices: the startup says its technology can be used in markets including logistics, cattle tracking, smart collars for pets, GPS watches for kids, car inventory, construction sites, and soil temperature monitoring. Haro said the low-hanging fruit is those industries that are desperate for network coverage even once per day, like remote asset monitoring for the oil and gas industry. As the constellation scales, Hubble will turn its attention to sectors that may need more frequent updates, like soil monitoring, to continuous coverage use cases like fall monitoring for the elderly. Once its up and running, a customer would simply need to integrate their devices' chipsets with a piece of firmware to enable connection to Hubble's network.
A meaningless stunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Bluetooth is not suitable for this application. Yes, you can trick it into working, but it will never be practical. My take is they want to scam some investors.
Re:A meaningless stunt (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny, that was my first thought too - "why Bluetooth rather than some purpose designed communications protocol meant for tracking from space?". The next thought was "oh, probably for investor hype, hit the right keywords, claim existing Bluetooth penetration". The next thought however was, "wait, today's engineers don't come up with anything new anymore, they copy paste existing technologies to try to achieve what they want, which is why it takes MegaBytes of RAM to run a Hello World! program nowadays - I still remember the days where microcomputers had 64KB or RAM+ROM and could do graphical games, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. So perhaps shoving a Bluetooth receiver on a satellite is the best the current generation of engineers can do, and it's considered an accomplishment worth millions of VC money". The last thought made me a little sad.
It's more that marketing+sales are harder than getting an engineer to frankenstein a version of physics.
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Bluetooth is not suitable for this application.
I remember when the crazies suggested JavaScript would take over the world, I also remember when I joined them.
Re:A meaningless stunt (Score:4, Insightful)
Bluetooth is a protocol and frequency combination designed for low power, short distances.
2.4ghz attenuates very quickly through atmosphere, because it also happens to be the frequency that water resonates at. (which is ALSO why it is used for microwave ovens...)
Since it attenuates so quickly in atmosphere, it is perfect for low power, short distance communication of consumer devices, (which would absolutely BOOTSTOMP the spectrum if this was not the case.)
Trying to do this FROM SPACE is.... "So. You want to beam a signal, that is absorbed very intensely by water vapor-- THROUGH the atmosphere, and cloudcover, FROM SPACE?" type dumb.
Now, if they mean "Satellite to satellite" communication, FAR above the atmosphere-- sure-- that might actually work.
But satellite to surface, and vise versa? NO. NO SIR. THAT IS DUMB.
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Thanks. My thinking exactly. Always remarkable how many people do not even understand the very basics but still feel qualified to comment. Dunning-Kruger effect at work.
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Now-- ASSUMING they mean Satellite to Satellite communication-- (Such as for steering, collision avoidance, time signal synchronization for phased array comm with the ground, etc...)
Sure-- I can see some obvious advantages to using a HIGHLY MODIFIED bluetooth stack, with a bog standard bluetooth transponder.
Namely, bluetooth transponders are made in bulk. They are inexpensive, AND already designed to consume low power. They are being used in a mostly evacuated environment, so attenuation (might.. Possibly.
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Yes.
No, they do not mean satellite-to-satellite. From their web-page, they mean ground-to-satellite. The "demo" was satellite-to-ground though with standard BT hardware on the satellite, and "signals" being "detected" on the ground with no mentioning of what hardware was used on the ground and no actual claims to a "connection". That one is just bad reporting. They could literally have rented an ultra-sensitive radio-telescope on the ground for that "demo" and would only be lying by misdirection.
The whole t
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Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
'cheap, disposable microsat constellations'
No, not starlink type, I mean the 'a highschool student made this' kind.
Keeping those OFF the normal communication channel, AND being COTS, would be win-win.
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Unless the goal is to spy on people's Bluetooth connections from orbit. If they just demonstrated a receiver sensitive enough to do that, they will probably be getting calls from various government agencies today.
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They would need .... a mac truck sized satellite... for that.
Maybe bigger.
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Unless the receiver is on the ground. If it works one way, it will work the other way. No need to launch so much mass to prove it, you can put the low power Bluetooth end in space.
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No.
Bluetooth devices (the things being tracked) have a power output measured in single digit milliwatts. Usually around 5 to 7mW. This is why your airpods can last for HOURS AND HOURS on a 75mWH LIPO cell.
Now-- consider that you are usually belting out some 750 WATTS (over 1000 times more energy) using a microwave oven, and your reheated slice of pizza absorbs a significant amount of that, to get reheated--- You have a pretty good idea just how far that energy is gonna actually go through atmosphere.
A few
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So you think they are lying about it being Bluetooth? It either exceeds the power limits for licence free operation in the 2.4GHz band, or it's some other variation of the protocol like a different frequency?
They seem to imply that they are using standard Bluetooth chips.
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
I mean the same thing others are saying.
This is a laughably dumb idea, with a very shysterly tech demo, clearly designed to fleece rich idiots.
PT Barnum's axiom applies.
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The US uses football field sized satellites. And that's not little American football fields.
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They would have a very hard time doing that from orbit. Besides, we can already do that for an entire city just by flying a drone over it, or a car down the road. That's old technology now.
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they will probably be getting calls from various government agencies today.
You may be as much as a decade too late. Our TLAs have probably had such classified capabilities for at least that long.
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
FFS, seriously? A satellite tgat can monitor Bluetooth chips in your phone/laptop FROM SPACE? That's as stupid as the hype about passive RFID tags (unpowered) being read by satellites in space to share your location...
Until they describe what the earth station was (device, RF power, antenna design) I am not impressed. By mentioning IoT devices, they make it sound like my air tags on my luggage can be read from space - and they can't.
microwave ovens use dielectric heating (Score:5, Informative)
I also used to think that microwave ovens heated water molecules by resonance but this is a common myth.
Microwave ovens use dielectric heating see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], this is nothing to do with the resonance of water molecules
See also the Principles section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
While consumer microwave ovens operate at 2.45GHz many commercial ovens use 915MHz these frequencies are chosen more to avoid interfering with communications etc than anything else.
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I also used to think that microwave ovens heated water molecules by resonance
Resonance, no. But dielectric heating in a microwave oven works with polar molecules. The principal one for this application is water.
Re:microwave ovens use dielectric heating (Score:4, Insightful)
I also used to think that microwave ovens heated water molecules by resonance but this is a common myth
Resonance, no. But dielectric heating in a microwave oven works with polar molecules. The principal one for this application is water.
Right. But there's nothing special about 2.45 GHz; that frequency is no more highly absorbed by water than any other frequency in the neighborhood.
2.45 GHz is used for microwave ovens because it's the industrial, scientific and medical band, and you don't need a license. And it's easy to make high-efficiency magnetrons at that frequency.
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2.4ghz attenuates very quickly through atmosphere, because it also happens to be the frequency that water resonates at. (which is ALSO why it is used for microwave ovens...)
Certainly true rain and clouds are a problem as well as atmospheric attenuation but this is not a deal breaker for intermittent telemetry. To give you some idea it costs about 1 dB extra on top of normal FSPL to get through half of the atmospheres mass on a clear day at 2.4 GHz if the transmitter / receiver is directly above you. It is also transparent to ionospheric effects. Not the most ideal frequency but certainly usable.
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My guess is they're using bluetooth protocol, but over something like S band or whatever is more appropriate
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Might work is not the same as being a more appropriate protocol. Bluetooth as a standard is clunky. Satellite to satellite communications is a very different set of criteria than any wireless communication near the surface of Earth, so why cobble together an existing solution? As for low power, I think Bluetooth is too high power for many applications I've used wirelessly. It might be low power for consumer use, or for devices that are recharged on a regular basis, but it's generally used because it has
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The language may be Turing complete, but Turing machines are defined with an infinite tape. Last I checked, computers do not yet have infinite memory. So no, they cannot "basically" do anything with it.
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The language may be Turing complete, but Turing machines are defined with an infinite tape. Last I checked, computers do not yet have infinite memory. So no, they cannot "basically" do anything with it.
Yes they can. Look up what Turing complete means. And note my fucking inclusion of " enough computing power" specifically for nitpickers like you.
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Not, they cannot. "Turing complete" is a model for _theoretical_ computation power in the sense of computability. It has no meaning for the real world. In particular, a Turing complete mechanism _must_ have unlimited storage.
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Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
Oops. We software developers have been assuming you have infinite memory. Kind of explains a lot about this industry, doesn't it.
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Nah, if they were scammers they wouldn't try to steal credibility by naming themselves the same as a famous and successful but completely unrelated satellite project.
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Hahahaha, somehow I missed that one. Glaringly obvious, isn't it?
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
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Bluetooth is not suitable for this application. Yes, you can trick it into working, but it will never be practical.
Guessing the Pringles can around the antenna is HUGE. :-)
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Maybe they rented one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That would do it. Still completely meaningless. They just detected some "signals" on the ground. They did not get a connection and very likely cannot get one with normal Bluetooth hardware and firmware. Speed-of-light is a thing, and hardware and firmware expecting a maximum of 33ns delay antenna-to-antenna will not be able to deal with 2ms, i.e. 60000 times too much.
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Maybe they rented one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Or Eric Cartman's [youtube.com] ... :-)
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They've written custom firmware for a Bluetooth chipset to allow this. I doubt it has anything much to do with Bluetooth, other than using a particular Bluetooth capable chipset (e.g. something from Nordic). Bluetooth operates in a set of modulated channels within the ISM band. I imagine they've just added a layer on this framework that generate a sort of spread spectrum signal across all the BT channels. With enough coding gain you can transmit any distance you want with any level of power, but the bit rat
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And this was satellite-to-ground, i.e. the easy direction. Just point a rather large dish at the satellite and "detecting" some "signals" (which is all they did) becomes really easy. They "business claim" (a.k.a. scam) is that they will be able to do ground-to-satellite with standard Bluetooth hardware and actually transfer data. i.e. get a full connection. There is no chance at all that they can do that, and for multiple reasons.
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
It's similar to how GPS works.
No, it's the opposite, and it's two-way, GPS is one-way.
A Bluetooth 'connection' involves, at a minimum, each side receiving the other side's transmissions, GPS has transmitters in space, receivers on the earth, this has transmitters on the ground AND in satellites.
I'd love to hear how a firmware update for my Apple Air Tags will enable them to be located anywhere on earth by their planned 36 satellites...
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I mean it likely uses code-division-multiple-access like GPS. The GPS signal is below the background thermal noise floor at a receiver on earth, yet you can receive it due to coding gain.
Your Air Tag could be modded to transmit to a satellite no problem. But it would likely have to transmit at something like 1 bit per minute, and it might not have enough battery life to transmit more than a few bits.
The best analogy I have is it's like if you're taking a measurement of a really noisy signal, you can improve
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
Based on the fact that itâ(TM)s pretty muc physically impossible for a Bluetooth physical signal to be picked up over that kind of distance, Iâ(TM)m going to:
1. Not read the article
2. Take an informed guess, that theyâ(TM)re not using the normal physical transmission method here, but are using the Bluetooth protocol
Iâ(TM)m guessing theyâ(TM)re doing this because it does sound rather appropriate in this situation - a device that needs to send little data whenever the host happens to
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Actually picking it up is easy. Just point one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] at the satellite. Data transfer needs a _lot_ more. Oh, and their claim is they will be able to do that with a standard Bluetooth device on the ground to their satellite. That is pretty much impossible for a number of reasons.
An obvious scam, even if this "demonstration" is likely just a lie by misdirection.
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Actually picking it up is easy. Just point one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... at the satellite. Data transfer needs a _lot_ more. Oh, and their claim is they will be able to do that with a standard Bluetooth device on the ground to their satellite. That is pretty much impossible for a number of reasons.
To be clear they are using existing Bluetooth hardware with modified firmware.. Probably to implement something like coded PHY on steroids and dispense with connection oriented bits.
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
I'm guessing they're doing this because it does sound rather appropriate in this situation - a device that needs to send little data whenever the host happens to be visible sounds like exactly what Bluetooth is for.
Trying to understand how Bluetooth fixes this? We've had satellites in orbit for decades, many are only 'visible' a few hours/day, and some how they worked just fine without Bluetooth technology/protocols...
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It's probably to avoid buying (expensive) spectrum.
If you can just use Bluetooth (somehow), you've saved yourself a few hundred million dollars.
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And of you can convince some investors that you can, then you have a nice scam. And that is what is going on here.
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
They are launching satellites to scam investors?
That is a huge up-front cost for a possible scam, seems unlikely...
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They launched a bluetooth sender with some minimal endurance into low-earth-orbit (600km). Apparently, you can get that for $10k or less.
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
Re: A meaningless stunt (Score:2)
Hey, I've got a great idea: let's take one of the worst wireless protocols ever devised and use it for the most ubiquitous communications network of all time!
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It was working months ago, but the satellite kept connecting to someone else's phone before they could get the connection to work.
noise (Score:2)
radio signals hate noise... if your beam is not focused then your receiver has to be... I thought 2.4GHz would be absorbed by clouds pretty well
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It is. You can maybe do this with a large high-gain antenna on a clear day. Maybe. Absolutely stupid for any type of practical application because there is far better technology for that use-case already available.
Now Martians can hack us also (Score:1)
Xi: "Hey! I broke in first, Zork, now beat it!"
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You are doing it wrong. Obviously, you are too close and need some kilometers of atmosphere and some clouds in between! Now, if you were trying to connect your headphones to a satellite....
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Now, if you were trying to connect your headphones to a satellite....
What's the problem? No headphone jack?
First Bluetooth connection.., (Score:4, Funny)
...and goddammit, the music is playing through the satellite, but phone calls are still going through my car stereo!
Just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should* (Score:4, Insightful)
Their technology demo is technically impressive. Detecting a Bluetooth signal from orbit is pretty impressive.
That said, the entire point of Bluetooth is to be short-range. Why would you want to connect to Bluetooth devices from orbit? Their web page mentions a whole host of monitoring technologies, from pet collars through general logistics to oil rigs. This isn't hugely convincing. For consumer devices like pet collars, there are already solutions, like using the mobile phone network. General logistics doesn't make any sense, because products are in buildings or trucks, and you aren't going to get bluetooth signals through the ceilings.
Remote applications like oil wells are a bit more persuasive, but they will be competing with things like Starlink. While bluetooth chips may be inexpensive, the satellite service certainly won't be. Saving a few bucks on the hardware seems unlikely to be relevant.
Re:Just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition, this likely needs clear sky, an isolated location and a carefully aligned high-gain antenna and some special hardware on one side. The whole thing is clearly a scam to get investor money.
Incidentally, they did not do surface-to-space. They did space-to-surface. The distinction is important, because while they apparently had a low-cost and light standard Bluetooth sender on the satellite, nothing was stated about the receiver on the ground. That one will likely be more like a radio-astronomy dish very carefully targeted on the satellite, with special amplifiers and detectors. Which is the whole stated use-case in reverse. Also note that there is no claim to a "connection" in the referenced story, just a claim to have detected some signals.
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Not just clear sky, it needs air free from water vapor. Because BT frequency is the same that water resonates at. Receiver is probably in some very dry location.
This endeavor is beyond stupid and well into the realm of malicious.
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There is absolutely no doubt this is a scam.
water vapor absorption Re:Just because you *c ...] (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just clear sky, it needs air free from water vapor.
Not at 2.45 GHz. Clouds and rain fade isn't a huge problem at that low a frequency, it gets to be a problem only at higher frequencies. There's graphs of microwave absorption vs frequency all over the web, but this one shows the different components of absorption: https://ars.els-cdn.com/conten... [els-cdn.com]
Note that the axis is db/km. Here's the data more specifically for the low frequencies, at a humidity of 30 gr/m3 (which corresponds to 100% humidity at 30 degrees C, sea level pressure). 2.45 GHz is way down on the left side, where water absorption is nearly ignorable: https://ars.els-cdn.com/conten... [els-cdn.com]
Because BT frequency is the same that water resonates at.
A common misbelief, but no, water doesn't resonate at 2.45 GHz any more than any other nearby frequency. In general, the shorter the wavelength, the more absorption by water.
(source for the images: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com] )
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Incidentally, they did not do surface-to-space. They did space-to-surface. The distinction is important, because while they apparently had a low-cost and light standard Bluetooth sender on the satellite,
They have a custom built phased array antenna on the satellite.
nothing was stated about the receiver on the ground. That one will likely be more like a radio-astronomy dish very carefully targeted on the satellite, with special amplifiers and detectors. Which is the whole stated use-case in reverse. Also note that there is no claim to a "connection" in the referenced story, just a claim to have detected some signals.
The only non-reversible tx/rx elements are receiver sensitivity and transmit power. One need not have big honkin antennas on both sides. It's enough to have a big one on one side. The math works out the same either way.
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Being able to make airtag-accurate tracking devices work globally from space without high power required (ie work for years on a button cell), without cellular networks required, and being able to make it look like an ordinary bluetooth device to blend in, *AND* being able to transmit other telemetry besides just location (such as sound), has very obvious military and espionage applications, not to mention industrial applications.
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Yep. If it could be done. It cannot. But it is ideal for painting a rosy (false) picture of billions to be earned, so please gives us some more investor money!
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Except for the fact that they already did it, so..... yeah.
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No, they did not. If you _actually_ read the referenced article instead of just the /. headline, you will find that what they did was a satellite to ground thing with a standard Bluetooth sender on the satellite, but on the ground they had something unspecified, like a really large dish carefully pointed at the satellite with a super-cooled ultra-low-noise amplifier, and even with that they did _not_ get a connection, they merely "detected" the signal.
So....yeah. Some "fact" you have there.
Re: Just because you *can* doesn't mean you *shoul (Score:2)
Being able to make airtag-accurate tracking devices work globally from space without high power required (ie work for years on a button cell), without cellular networks required, and being able to make it look like an ordinary bluetooth device to blend in, *AND* being able to transmit other telemetry besides just location (such as sound), has very obvious military and espionage applications, not to mention industrial applications.
Your description could have been ripped from the Thanos Investor prospectus, it is a non-sensical description of things that are physically impossible.
So you imagine a batter-powered device with a GPS receiver, transmitting a Bluetooth signal from an off-the-shelf chipset into PCB antenna in an Apple Air Tag form-factor? No. It won't happen. It's non-sensical.
Key word here: tracking (Score:3)
the startup says its technology can be used in markets including logistics, cattle tracking, smart collars for pets, GPS watches for kids, car inventory, construction sites
Yes, it'll mean cheaper tracking ability using lower-power equipment to track every aspect of your life.
No thanks.
Re: Key word here: tracking (Score:2)
So they want to tag cattle and track them from space? Why? Do we really have a problem with cattle wandering off and getting lost?
A tag capable of being read from a satellite in space would not cost Pennie's, will not be as small as an Air Tag, and will require being either powered externally or have its batteries recharged on a regular basis.
They can do it? (Score:2)
Meanwhile I can't get my goddamn bluetooth to connect from my phone to my car from 2 inches away.
bluetooth is not ready for prime time (Score:2)
they need to stop extending bluetooth until it can reliably pair and maintain a connection.
Is long-range Bluetooth a feature, or a bug? (Score:2)
Never a fan of Bluetooth, I use it for a few things that refuse to use other connections. I thought that the limited range was a good thing, both for security and to prevent confusing cross-talk. 600 km Bluetooth reception (according to the article referenced here) doesn't immediately strike me as a good thing.
A tech adjusting my BIotronik pacemaker from across the room told me he was connecting with Bluetooth. There are definitely at least two wireless communications enabled, at least one of them allows
Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary evidence (Score:2)
* Whitepaper - Nope
* Presentation of the members of the board and key persons - Nope
* Contact information - Nope
* Media relations and press releases - Nope
* Claims their firmware can be uploaded to "your existing BLE location tracking device" - Yep
* Lists any disclaimer regarding which chipsets that are compatible - Nope
* Has more than 2 blogposts - Nope
* Claims to have heard a BLE signal from space - not impossible to hear a BLE beacon with sufficient transmission power and directional ant