Moo-Tooth wireless

When Steve Eicker is visiting Valley Ag Software's clients he's often inside the plant - which in his case is usually a dairy barn. The dairy management software vendor has begun supporting RFID and bluetooth technology as part of a system that scans cows.

In that harsh environment, Bluetooth performs well, he says. So well, in fact, that when visiting clients in metal-clad barns that block his cell phone signal, he parks his phone outside. "I'll leave the phone in the car and just take the Bluetooth headset," he says. In so doing the cell phone can still get a signal and he can pick up calls on his head set via Bluetooth - up to a point. His head set, he says, has a range of about 100 feet.

A spokesperson for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group claims that the wireless standard, which operates in the 2.4Ghz spectrum, does indeed do a better job penetrating those barn walls than do some cell phone radios. However, most Bluetooth-enabled cell phones (with the exception of some Motorola units) are limited to a range of just 30 feet.

"Yes, Bluetooth does a better job in this situation of communicating through this structure. It can go through walls and while signals can be affected by metal and other barriers, it does a better job than some other wireless technologies at overcoming that," the spokesperson says.

I haven't tried it yet, but if it works that's a nice trick to remember the next time I wander into a metal-clad warehouse, big-box retailer or other industrial building.