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Terms apply. Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. I am giddy with excitement. It's not often that we get a new version of the Bluetooth spec out. And this isn't a point version. This is version six of the core spec that has come out. We're that ton of really cool features. The coolest in my opinion is something called channel sounding, which is really going to make some big waves in the real world.
Because it's going to bring very accurate range finding to standard Bluetooth devices, not fancy expensive devices, but regular devices will have centimeter level accuracy. Which is going to open up tons of new use cases, tons of business opportunities and some great user experiences. So we are privileged to have the cooperation of the folks at the Bluetooth Sieg. They've been regular guests talking about new features.
And I was delighted when Damon Barnes, who's their director of technical marketing, agreed to join me to have a conversation about this new feature. So without further ado, let's talk to Damon. The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Williott bringing intelligence to every single thing. So Damon, thanks so much for coming on the show. Certainly, certainly. So it's actually great timing. I just got the notification along with everyone else that Bluetooth version six is out. Yes.
You had up technical marketing. I'm sure you've been fielding a ton of questions about that. And you know, one of the major features of Bluetooth six, which was what we're going to focus on, which is channel sounding range finding. And I think, you know, you think, well, Bluetooth is done. It's there, but it isn't. It keeps on evolving and getting better. And from what I've heard, I'm very excited about this ability to get more precision in terms of distance measurement.
Yep. And also, I'm really intrigued by some of the other features. I want to focus on range sounding because I think it's a subject to its own right. But can you give us just a quick overview of what is in version six of the Bluetooth specification?
Yeah, sure. Let me try to give you a little bit of an overview. So about two and a half weeks ago, we were released with two core versions, specification six dot out, a little bit of a mouthful to get out. But it included would have been include six features total including channel sounding.
Now go through just a short overview of the other five, obviously we're going to get in the channel sounding, you know, what it is, some of the detail around and all that good stuff. But the first one is called decision based advertising filtering and other work mouthful of what this feature actually does it improves scanning efficiency.
It's beneficial when there are a large number of devices that use messaging broadcast and this feature helps prevent throughput degradation with a large number of devices, for instance, like in a mission network or broadcasting messages.
So that's a debat is the acronym that you'll see use like you to go to core after the first entry. And then the second features called monitoring advertisers. This feature basically enables a C I event, excuse me, A C I events to be used to inform an observer device like when advertising is going on. Help it better understand when a device moves out of range and this helps provide energy savings, excuse me, energy savings benefit. And then the third features and I saw enhancements.
This feature really pertains to audio and it helps reduce latency with respect to connected I sockerness not necessarily connect to excuse me, I suckerness communication. And then number four, this one's more of an enhancement. So this is a link layer extended feature set. That's some lower level feed enhancement, but it enables devices to communicate more information about link layer features that are supported by a device.
And then lastly, not including channel sounding, of course, feature call frame space update this adds a flexibility to connections or connected I sockerness communication. So L.A. audio and even or a cast or features in a use case that can benefit from frame space update. So that's the other five and then of course we have channel sounding which I won't go into now. Right, but super interesting will.
Made drill into some of those on on another occasion, but I'm certainly going to be looking into it. You know, my I work at will yell it's my day job and so we're super interested in how we scale to really, really large numbers of Bluetooth devices. Yeah, so there's a couple in there for you. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but yeah, there's a couple that in there for you to pick a look at a little more closely.
Very good. Well, let's focus on let's get on to channel sounding for that. I'd really like to understand. You know, what it is. Yeah, what it can be used for and a little bit of how it works and we'll probably go in that order. So if people's eyes start to roll into the back of the heads on the how it works, then they can.
They can drop off, although they don't because we've got kind of an interesting conversation coming about how you got into the Bluetooth Sieg and your music choices, but the Bluetooth specification works really well, but what I found is people are constantly wanting to use it to try and identify where things are. And so the ability to get more accurate with less infrastructure is really appealing. We'll channel channel sounding help with that. What does it do?
So channel sounding. I'm going to start kind of at a pretty high level, just so especially if folks that are listening in or watching them aren't that familiar. And then we can kind of, you know, drill down into a little bit more of the detail, but I mean at kind of like the highest level, the way that we messages or explain it from the marketing side, which you see in all of our public communications.
We say that Bluetooth channel sounding is a secure fine raging feature and it's going to help enhance the convenience, safety and even security really any Bluetooth connected device. So if you have a Bluetooth device that's paired or excuse me, a device or product that you can pair to another product, the Bluetooth channel sounding feature can be leveraged to essentially allow those devices to understand the distance between one another.
And so that's how we kind of explain it at a high level. And then like if you talk about or want to talk about like, you know, use cases that can benefit from the channel sounding feature. But just before we get on to the use cases, I just want to understand what it is. So you need a connection between the two devices. It's not something you can do just with advertising packets, which is the kind of high I'm here phase of the conversation.
And you broadcast advertising packets, then you decide you're going to connect. And then once you're connected, then you can start to do this more accurate measurement of distance. And is it, it's just distance. It's not like angle arrival, where it's distance and direction or that that is correct.
That's a, those are a couple important clarifications to make. And I might outline it a little something like follows. So channel sounding was, well, let me first hit on another point and just to re emphasize channel sounding was designed to, you know, just be a feature for Bluetooth connected devices.
There are, you know, there's non connected or connection analysis. I guess how we say it on the Bluetooth six side or on the Bluetooth technology space features for distance measurement and direction that are separate of channel sounding. And so we, what we kind of say is we have for Bluetooth technology. We actually have a portfolio, a belief of device positioning features.
And the, the list of the portfolio kind of goes something like follows. So that you have, we did advertising broadcast. That allows you to basically determine a device's presence that can be connect that's connectionless. You don't need a connection for that. Obviously. And then historically, the way that designers and product manufacturers would determine the distance between devices would be to use RSSI or receive signal strength.
This can be connection oriented or connectionless. And then direction finding, of course, you know, a feature from 2019, 2020 can be connection oriented or connectionless. And that gives you the direction. So the number of the degrees you are, you know, where you need to go. And then, you know, channel sounding is the most recent addition to this portfolio connection oriented only device distance only.
And you know, the nice thing about channel sounding and maybe I'm going a little too far, but we can back office that, you know, you can get centimeter level distance measurement accuracy with this new feature. And that's pretty amazing. So centimeter level distance accuracy. And we'll go into how and why. But that is really, really cool.
And I want to just go back and recap what you said to make sure that it properly and give people a chance to absorb it. So, you know, there's, you start off with presence. So, you know, the advertising packets, which are basically the things that my printer uses to tell my computer that it's available for use or that your earbuds use to tell the phone that it's the earbuds and nearby and available for connection.
That can basically do presence, which is I'm here and I you can receive me. And then you can, okay, you're here, but are you really close or are you really far or are you somewhere in between and for that, you can basically look at how strong is the signal that I'm receiving.
So like a lighthouse, if the light is bright, you're close, if the light is dim, you're far away. And if the light is somewhere in between that, then you're kind of medium. But it has problems because, you know, radio waves signals go up and down based on all sorts of things, not just proximity.
That's why you kind of want other tools and techniques, but the good thing is it's, it's relatively easy and straightforward and you don't need a connection and pretty much every device can do it. You know, if you, every device can advertise and so relatively straightforward.
And then of course we've got the angle of arrival thing, which we've covered on other episodes where you get this, you have more sophisticated antennas, so you have to have specialist devices and you can say, this is the degree of the angle that this is coming from. And so that allows us to infer distance when you have more than one receiver, but the cool thing about what you've described is I can find out distance and I can just have one device talking to another device.
I don't need three devices. There's going to be a ton of applications for that I would think, let's go into why I would want to do that then what, you know, what was some of the use cases that drove the creation of this new capability. Yes, certainly I will say that as far as the use cases go, there was like one lead use case that was a little, there was front and center, I should say, and that was digital key for automotive for automotive access control.
And so that was the number one and that's where we're seeing the most. I was shouldn't say the most interest. I should say as far as the long as far as like traction goes, like market adoption and whatnot. So you want to know that these you're seeing hearing us, you've got a car park, you've got a ton of people and you want to stop someone doing something nefarious or accidental. And you want to know how close is this Bluetooth key. I guess the key could be a smartphone.
It could be a fob. But yeah, and so it's and you know what it, you know, it's, you know, available today with certain, I mean, the way the future works is kind of available today already, but you know, enables passive entry right.
So you know, as you get close and because the level of precision, the security, you know, that it's the person who's actually in possession of the phone or the fog that's, you know, either, you know, about to or getting close to the car and close enough to unlock and allow them in or they've gotten maybe far enough away after they shut the door to lock the door.
And so that's really the front and center use case for for automotive. I mean, obviously there's other, you know, passive use cases around, you know, just like automotive for passive, you know, vehicle systems.
But I mean, those are certainly possible also, but the entry and exit and locking the doors really front and center. And so that also applies to, you know, access control, you know, at home doors garage. So that's, you know, kind of cool as well as you think about like the automation that can be possible.
And then, you know, because so many devices are blue tooth, it's not a big step to, you know, implement the feature as it might be if you were, you know, going for another wireless technology or something like that. And then, you know, that, you know, talking just a little bit more about use cases and then on pause for a second.
And then, you know, there's really, you know, we kind of touched on it. It's a little bit obvious to emphasize one more time though that and really any bleach is connected device, you know, that you paired or bleach is device that you pair to another device, potentially take advantage of channel sounding.
You know, a really large number of devices, millions, close to billions of devices, it will be billions of devices by, you know, 2028. And it, but, you know, as far as use cases like industrial, you could, you know, look at, you know, HMI type solutions, potentially take advantage of channel sounding controller devices that are damn.
HMI is, oh, my bad, let me explain, human machine interface. So using basically a tablet phone or some type of like control interface in a manufacturing or industrial facility to control machines that could even be, you know, to program robots, things of that nature. And so, you know, understanding the precise distance between those two devices is, you know, pot that helps, you know, improve safety is like one of the main benefits that you could think of there.
What will a device maker need to do to use channel sounding like for angle of arrival, they had, you know, you basically make a device that's the size of a small frisbee with quite a complex antenna. And you've got yourself of, I don't know, a $3, $400, $500 device. Yeah. What do I need to do if I want to include channel sounding into the smart speaker I'm making?
Yeah, that's a great question. And I've got a couple answers for you here. So, you do not need the super complex. I shouldn't say super complex because there's a reason angle of arrival. You know, requires the array. You do not need multi antenna solutions to enable channel sounding. You can take advantage or run the channel sounding feature with wireless SLC system one ship or, you know, I see whatever type of an integrated circuit that's designed in with a single antenna. That's number one.
So, as far as the integrated circuit goes, you know, that's going to be something that if like a device manufacturer already has a Bluetooth ship, they will need to check with their semiconductor manufacturer to see if the device will support channel sounding. Channel sounding does bring in some new physical layer type stuff. I'll say I won't get into the details. We're not to that part yet.
So, there is a possibility that like, you know, a rare of their new chip might be needed to support channel sounding and, you know, just for the more advanced RF capabilities that are necessary. But that's kind of does really like the two main considerations as far as like adding the future.
So, it's part of Bluetooth 6. What's the story on backwards compatibility? Does this mean that I will have to buy an iPhone 17 in order to potentially use this with my phone should I guess it's up to Apple whether they even support it. So, you have a chip that has the chip vendor has to support it. I don't know what else doesn't sound like you need a fancy antenna, but there's going to be firmware and operating system software changes that will be required.
That is definitely correct. I mean, you will need two devices that both support the channel sounding feature as long as both devices support the channel sounding feature. You know, the great thing about Bluetooth, you know, it is obviously a wireless standard. I don't really just say that, but I will say it.
And so, you know, the functionality, you know, from, you know, the controller level up to the host level is interoperable. So, as long as both devices support Bluetooth channel sounding, it's your IC supports it. I'm not going to say that it's like, you know, snap of the finger, but it's, you know, pretty straightforward process to add support to a product.
Yeah. And when will the chips be available that support this feature? Yes. So, as far as, so let me, when we're talking about product support, there are, we get, we get, we get asked this question all the time. And, you know, it's, we think ship supports coming this year. There are a number of different solutions like ebks that are available already. And what is an EVK? Sorry. Eval kit. So, semiconductor company, like, I mean, name red, awful couple names of companies that have enough support.
And so, I think about this. So, NXP, silicon labs, and I believe TI all have channel sounding solutions, they're early implementations. But, you know, they are marketing and, you know, trying to sell those solutions to their customers today. And so, the short direct answer again is like enabling technology chips will be available this year.
And before the end of the year, and have Nordic said anything, I know you don't speak for Nordic, but Nordic. I am not sure the exact status, but Nordic is a company that we're saying is supporting channel sounding. They partnered up with us on like the marketing and all that stuff.
I'm not exactly sure of their, eval kit, but they are definitely going to be, you know, a leader as far, you know, having support. I can't say whether or not it's going to be this year or not, but I would expect it pretty soon. OK, so it sounds like all of the major Bluetooth chipsets will be supporting this feature. And then it'll be a matter of deciding the people that are building the products will decide if they are going to use it.
I noticed you quoted Denso in part of the announcement. So, I'm assuming, you know, they make car parts and I'm assuming they were part of the group that was actually working on the standard. Is that stuff secret or not? Is the companies that worked on the standard? Is that confidential? What you can see, let me see what I can show where you can see in core version 6.0, you can see a list of companies.
I have like, you know, I compiled a little list of like companies just like in preparation for this that are supporting channel sounding. It's fine to say that Denso is supporting it. So, and I left off a couple of minutes ago, Samsung electronics. I think you probably saw, you know, they made pretty positive statements. They have a really nice demo that they showed off at our members summit last year to a prototype smartphones had an app.
And you could see the distance being displayed between the two phones that was synchronized. So, that was really nice. Who else did I leave off here? Apple, they're on the board. Apple is on the board, but you know how Apple is. They haven't, you know, they're very good poker face. So, we're not sure if they're going to support it or not. What I can tell you though, and this is public information, is that support is coming to Android.
We have heard, and you can see in a sample code that it's a slated to come to Android 15. And it's cute if you're familiar with those releases. It's QPR 3. And that, you know, the really neat things that the sound is like if you were to go to the sample code Android.com site and search channel sounding, you could find a framework for arranging profile or excuse me,
service for the client, sir clients and server devices. And then also they have a test app available. And so that's really early days for that to already kind of be in place and it to, you know, kind of be available, you know, in public domain. So we're super excited about that. So, you know, you know, I don't know if it's going to be this year. Actually, I wouldn't even want to go there. But I mean, support is definitely coming to Android. And so that's, you know, super exciting.
That is exciting. You can imagine they have their own brand of asset tags, battery power tags that this would be just amazing like the real guide account feature, which, which would be very helpful.
Yep. It will be very interesting to see what Apple do. As you say, poker face, hard to tell, but I was so disappointed when they put ultra wideband in their phones rather than angle of arrival. But, you know, my hope is that this will be something that kind of makes them think about using Bluetooth for finding the the air tags that they make.
And that would be a cool application. Yeah, yeah. That's good to know about what it's going to take to support. And, you know, so there's an operating system element to this as well. Just because you got the chipset. That's not enough. Just because the device is integrated with the chipset. That's not enough. You need some APIs to access this. And I miss. So I'm wondering if there's anything else I need to ask you about the operating system support other than yes. Android is going to have it.
I guess there's other software platforms, Linux and the light that will probably end up. I think they will. I don't have the detail, especially. I mean, I don't even have the detail period to say publicly what's going to happen on the Linux side. But I, you know, the thing that we're really excited about. And just to re-emphasize that, you know, we have a ranging profile and service that's use case, agnostic to, you know, the services, what basically enables the APIs.
That's not adopted yet, but it's targeting adoption by the end of the year. I, the date that I saw almost recently, it looks like it's late November. So it could be December. But so that'll be in place. And so with that, you know, I mentioned it a moment ago, you go to the Android code search site. And you can see that that framework that there's a framework for using the service.
So that's, you know, really great. And so that's there. That foundation is there. And you know, it's not tied to a specific use case. So that's actually quite nice. Do you have a sense of how power efficient this feature is? Because, you know, my general sense is that with RSSI, you end up the received strength indicator approach for non-connected.
Distance measurement, you're basically spraying packets out all the time and looking at the signal strength. Is this more or less same or don't know in terms of. We have members testing, but we don't have an answer that we can give right now that's like, is it better or worse? I mean, just to be, you know, I really open.
With channel sounding, you, you are adding an additional procedure to basically, you know, do run the signal exchange. So there, you know, anytime you're running, you know, our signal, there's going to be power draw right. Yeah. And whether it's more of a power draw or less than, you know, RSSI would be to we've actually asked for some testing on that. And so it's kind of underway, but we don't have the results yet. Okay, well, it'll be interesting to see.
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So let's just is there anything else we you can share about use cases that you've seen the kinds of applications. Let's see what use cases so I will say that I wouldn't be surprised to see. You know, we talked for a few minutes about digital key, but on like the find my devices or find my networks, which you're seeing them call them.
I wouldn't be surprised to see you know announcements, not only you know in for the US and the markets, but maybe in greater China as well about you know solutions potentially ecosystems that you know support find my and maybe even you know mentioning you know leveraging the channel sounding feature and you know find my kind of like tradition.
You're oftentimes just thinking of like the little tracker tags or whatever, but you know the interesting thing about channel sounding being connected oriented. I mean almost any device really could kind of turn into a find my type solution. And so I'm going to give you one that just kind of goes to my head with a challenge that I deal with with the kids. So you know a lot of like TV remarks these days right there.
Bluetooth, at least some of the newer model high and TVs you know it sure would be nice if you could you know use your TV to kind of help you identify where that remote was when it's under a couch Christian under the tea you know something like that. So you know you have to have the you know remote paired to the TV and so you know that could be an interesting use case and you know it probably ends up being something that's controlled by a mobile app on a phone or something like that.
But that's you know certainly possible so that's just kind of an interesting one that I think about it relates to like kind of making the find my networks use case if I can just generically call it that you know me more than just a track. You know like an item finding to well you're saying that triggered another thought in my head which is yes.
Channel sounding is essentially just giving you the distance not the angle but presumably you could have two radios say either side of that TV screen that are both doing the channel sounding to your remote. And if it's sent me to level accuracy then you can do some trilateration basically you know you draw the radius see where it sets and you've you've got yourself some really nice X Y indoor positioning or outdoor positioning.
Yeah yeah absolutely I mean you know things tricks techniques you know this very well you know system level that can be done and so yeah you let you know using this channel sounding feature with other techniques is can kind of do some pretty cool things other you know. That's why we're super excited about it and you saw great press coverage about you know the feature of the last couple of weeks so yeah. Great well congratulations on that so how does it work.
How does channel sounding work okay so let's because some folks may not be. It's kind of started to high level at a high level I guess and I'm going to just I'll run through a couple little pitches I have for you and then you can wear me back and forth but so.
And most basic level kind of just to reiterate connection connectively to devices devices that have been paired so one to one topology these two devices both have to support channel sounding like I said and what's going to really happen here is there's going to be a signal exchange between the two devices.
The two devices the primary there's two distance measurement methods but the one for precise distance measurement is called phase based ranging with phase based ranging what's happening is one device which is called an initiator this is the device that wants to measure the distance to another device it basically sends a signal to the other device which is called the reflector which you know as you might suspect reflects the signal back.
This process is repeated across multiple frequencies after that initial sand and then the distance between the devices is calculated based on the phase difference between the transmitted and receive signals over those frequency and now I can say it's based on for face based range this is like a well proven like distance measurement technique that's been used for years and years but we've now implemented the blue tooth version of flavor of face based ranging and so that's how you're able to get.
I'm actually distance measurements with blue tooth channel sounding and you know one of their just point on there is like that's very accurate but we're also seeing like really good really steady performance over good distances we have testing results up to 50 meters today and theoretically the solution or feature rather should work pretty well you know 100 meters even up to 150 meters we haven't done testing between at the 100 to 150 meter more.
We're having members do testing yet but we're hoping to get that done you know maybe later in the year but yeah so that's the high accuracy distance measurement portion of the feature so yeah. So I'm going to just my brains chucking away trying to think about how this works so you know radio waves a bit like waves on the ocean they they go up and they go down and so they have there's an angle to to that change.
And you're able to somehow understand the phase that that is at and so given that that the distance between the peak and the trough is fixed based on the frequency that you're broadcasting at if you move forward by a centimeter then you'll basically that that wave you'll interrupt it at a slightly different point.
It's cresting and falling and I'm assuming that if you are doing that with waves that are at different frequencies so they have different gaps between the peaks and you kind of measure you know what is the angle of the phase on higher frequency versus a very slightly lower frequency then you that's kind of how you you work it out but how do you know that I mean
this might there might be I don't know how many waves they're going to be between some car keys and the car but how do you know whether there's twice as many waves how do you know that you're one meter way versus two meters away I can see why you know I'm one meter away and then I'm 99 centimeters away but how do you know how many of those waves have gone up and down in between the
yeah well there's there's there's there's a there's a time element also so with the channel sound the with phase based ranging there's you know the waves that you've done a very good job of just explaining but then there's also time how long it takes as well so it's really those two fat those two were the devices really initiators gathering phase and time information and that's where we're able to you know
to run a calculation based on a formula to determine the distance between the two devices and you know one point to note there on that is so the channel sounding feature doesn't actually or the devices don't use the channel sounding feature to calculate distance that is done by a ranging algorithm that runs on the application
so the just a kind of circle back to what I was just clarifying is that you know we get the phase data with the time data that's passed by the controller basically up to the host and the application is running a ranging algorithm and it runs it actually spits out a distance measurement calculation
so you say it's an application but is that an application running on the central processor unit on my phone or is it running on the controller in the system on chip no no no it would be on the on the host on the on the system yeah it would it wouldn't be on the controller okay clear all right that's good so amazing you're looking at the difference in time it takes for a signal to get from the key to the car
and then back again that you know the clocks to do that it's incredible that they're accurate enough to yes to to make all this stuff work I'm not an electrical engineer so it all seems like magic to me but I appreciate your explaining it and I
should add that you know your team have put some really excellent written materials if someone wants to read this slowly and go into the two levels of detail below what we've covered then then Bluetooth dot com it's all there and it's really comprehensive so very good
well is there anything else I should have asked you about this that people have been asking let me see if there was something else else wanted to tell you that maybe we didn't talk about we talked about Android I wanted to oh yeah you know here's another thing and we talked about digital key for automotive and this is really goes back to market traction and adoption I think it's just something to point at good to point out
you and I know you probably already seen these but just for the audience listening in or watching in greater China there's two connected car consortiums or standards bodies one called the intelligent connected car open alliance ICCOA and then another one's called the intelligent connected car ecosystem alliance ICCE you know love some acronyms and he have both of those companies or were you know publicly supportive of the channel
sounding feature and so you know we're you know they haven't said you know what they're going to do yet but you know just the fact they were willing to step in and you know the one record with us we think that this feature in greater China you know massive market has a lot of potential and you know we may see some you know pretty quick adoption you know you know in the greater China market so just grow that just for fun to my team ICCE that is actually an APEC
yeah yeah well and I know you know back to my day job back at willio we've been looking at the ambient IOT standards and of course Bluetooth is ahead there by a mile it's the technology that we use in our battery free Bluetooth tags but there is work going on to try and catch up in the in the cellular space and that's being driven by the Chinese as well so it seems like in China
they're really taking this digital to physical convergence thing seriously yeah and they have the scale to put it to good use and
to get the volume and to prove out the use cases and build out the networks so that's a good endorsement so Damon you work at the Bluetooth Sieg in my mind this is an amazing organization you know a relatively small group of people is influencing the standards that are part of literally over a billion devices that gets sold every year so I think all of us technical people are kind of
closeted rock stars we want to create something and have a big audience and Bluetooth certainly has a big audience how do you get this job playing in the rolling stones of the wireless technology business well I must say I do feel like I was very fortunate to be able to join the sick coming up on three years ago the way it all transpired was a pretty quick and seamless actually a recruiter reached out to me over linked in someone who still
left the sick part of sick staff and asked me if I'd consider talking to them about a role in a we had a talk and then I had to maybe like three or four maybe five more talks with various people and just everything fell into place really quickly and seem to make sense so it was
kind of like a no-brainer for me at the end of the day and I couldn't be happier to work here I mean it is I would say fairly prestigious and you know calling like the wireless industry so I'm loving it coming up on three years so what was it about your career that you felt set you up for for this role oh gosh it's been a almost almost a decade coming but I'll just give you like
real quick overview so I started working in the wireless technology space primarily in Wi-Fi and cellular at a startup that it was acquired but acquired by AT&T back in 2005 and you know I worked in Wi-Fi service provider type space you know up until 2017 and then moved to semiconductor side where I worked
at silicon labs for almost five years so that just that exposure to you know Wi-Fi for more than a decade and then you know it silicon labs abroad portfolio they have a really broad portfolio of IOT wireless connectivity I think it's what set me up well to be able to join the SIG and then you know start getting you know fairly specialized obviously with Bluetooth technology over the last several years or few years.
How big is the special interest group roughly the size of the staff I would estimate it's probably 170 ish people total that does include probably somewhere between you know 40 to 50 maybe contractors but yeah so pretty small very nimble organization and you know we operate very much like a startup. Very good well part of the tradition of this show is that I ask guests about three songs that have meaning to them are you do you enjoy music is that the body of life.
I do enjoy music I got a little probably bit of a curveball for you maybe as my responses but before I get to that yeah that teaser I will say that yeah growing up my parents were both very much music was a very big part of their life and so kind of something was always playing throughout the years and the 80s as I was a little kid and all that good stuff but so as far as like my songs go.
The curveball for you is I kind of picked a few that kind of have meaning meaning to me for different reasons so I have two kids nine almost 10 year old daughter and a son who just turned six.
And so I get what I asked my daughter last night when I was kind of you know looking through the material and getting ready for this I was like what's when you're what's your favorite song right now and so she is like textbook big swifty and so her favorite song is right now is cardigan from the folklore album which is you know a few years or so old.
Personally because I you know get to listen to Taylor Swift quite a bit on that same album I kind of have drawn to the song called exile it's a collaboration with Bon Eiver I think that's a kind of a neat song where he starts off. I got to ask you about Taylor Swift before we move on.
Okay yes yes have you been under immense pressure to tell your daughter to one of our concerts yes constantly constantly and so I hope to one day make that happen but it'll have to be the next round of a I think concert series I guess we never that happens but nothing happening this year for those small for those few stops she has the remainder of the year that was a list a little little bit too crazy short notice but
I think it's on call it like the bucket list or something to get done for her when she's still relatively yeah that's great yeah I remember taking my niece to see the spy skills and when they were a thing and that was like I knew that would be really memorable
I'm not a big spy skills fan I mean not that I've got nothing against them but not my cup of tea and so when we got the opportunity to go to Taylor Swift I really I went and it was just one of the best experiences concert experiences ever had just superlative straight stage production kind of a marathon event incredible buzz in the crowd and just for great musicians ship and the whole production video
stage costumes performance just incredible really really impressive so definitely worth having a new bucket list I will say I mean prior to her becoming like a big fan it's probably happened though you know gradually maybe not so gradually but over the last couple of years I never really personally listened to Taylor Swift either you know
obviously who she was but then you know over the last year 18 months I've become much more familiar part of the household almost so that's great well it helps you grow your children's interests become your absolutely absolutely okay number one number two all right and then number two my son he is only six just turned six but he has a he has a very he has a significant draw to music
maybe it's like his grandfather right I don't from his grandfather I don't know but so and his his favorite band right now might throw you for a little bit of loop maybe not I don't know but it's imagine dragons initially his favorite songs were radioactive and oh my gosh I'm forgetting that one but radioactive but right now the current
is bleeding out and I double check this with the master day and he was like yes you need to say that one bleeding out I was like what about Michael Jackson because he's a big Michael Jackson fan also likes
thriller you know all the hits and stuff but bleeding out it is imagine dragons for my six year old all right I see where you're going you're getting all these extra tracks in surp tichyously very cunning I appreciate that I wasn't really trying to do that but it's just more context I guess I don't
maybe I should have been more brief my answer not at all that's what it's all about I do this mainly because I just enjoy having this conversation and what was your third choice okay and the third one is more more close to home for me and so I mentioned that the outset that my parents were you know big music fans and when I was held was I 22 the summer before my senior year of college I did a study abroad that was primarily in N Burrell Scotland then we went to London
France and some other stuff but while we were in N Burrell the Rolling Stones were coming and they just so happened to have a I guess it's a little bit of a spoiler but they they just so happened to have you know it wasn't sold out or whatever so we went to this soccer stadium we're excuse me football stadium there was you know N Burrell I don't know exactly where the main soccer stadium and saw them put on a show and it was it was an incredible show kind of like
we're just mentioning with Taylor Swift and I think it was the first real earnest like large concert that I ever went to so it had a big impact on me and they played you know obviously all the hits put on a great show you know it was 25 years ago so you know they were still a little younger than they were today
but so as far as the song goes one of the songs that my parents used to always play and I mean I wouldn't like found one that like really spoke to me that they always play in the home was start me up so that would be number three Rolling Stones start me up very good well I'm so glad you chose that was a great song and tied in with my Rolling Stones reference
so yes so that kind of worked out it's the thing I love about this is always triggers off memories for me so my Rolling Stones story is round about the same time I wonder if it was on the same tour my wife and I were on holiday in Spain in San Sebastian we were staying at this quite nice hotel and it's like we go to check in and there's just something buzzing it's like the level of excitement and staffing was really intense and I like something going on you know
they're like no nothing's going on we're like okay we check in we go to walk out and as we're walking out this huge bus pulls in with a small van in front of it the van pulls up and basically the Rolling Stones get out of the van and we're like mouth open as Keith reaches walks past and so basically we were staying in this hotel for the same duration as them and their entourage was like downstairs eating breakfast with us
and unfortunately Mick Jagger did not join us for a for a quest on or any pioneer but it was just being in proximity of that all that was so cool and it could have been on the same tour because it was around about 25 years ago that was an incredible experience so that's yeah well Damon thanks very much for chatting with us and I feel smarter as a result of getting that knowledge infusion from you and congratulations on the standard I think it's going to be really successful
and I can't wait to start using products that have Bluetooth core specification 6 and channel sounding as a part of it thank you for having me very much to you this was lots of fun happy to come back anytime so that was my conversation with Damon Barnes of the Bluetooth special interest group and I hope you found that as interesting as I did
and I think the hardcore Mr. Beacon listener or viewer because he stayed to the end that I think people like us will probably be sitting in the baths, upstanding in the shower or taking the dog for a walk and ideas for how to use this new precise location measurement technique will probably be popping into our heads
I wouldn't be a tall surprised if new companies get formed to commercialize these ideas and the thing that raises me a lot of the building blocks one level they're sophisticated and then it's really simple it's basically about being able to measure the distance it's very simple and then you look at the next layer up and you see new businesses, new experiences, new use cases that are created
using these simple building blocks so that's what this podcast all about we'd love to help keep you up to date, get you up to speed on things, help new people learn about this digital physical convergence, the internet of things as well that we work in if you've enjoyed this episode please do tell other people about it it's all about spreading the knowledge and join us next time so until then stay safe, enjoy the journey
and of course my thanks to everyone that helped make this episode properly the folks at the Bluetooth Sieg and Aaron Hammock our fearless editor has to listen to me more than I do and Sierra Walden who helps publish these episodes and get them out there so take care see you next time
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