My local electronics superstore has entire isle devoted to Bluetooth speakers. You may have seen these. They connect wirelessly to your iPhone and Android mobile phone over a Bluetooth Low Energy (aka, Bluetooth 4 or BLE) connection and play your music.
I asked a few of the salespeople. They said the speakers are selling but sales are kind of sluggish. Pairing the speaker to the phone is not brain dead simple, and its frustrating when it doesn’t work. The speaker only plays when the mobile device is in close proximity. And, at a very intimate and quiet part of the movie “The Chaos of Stars” the speaker started blaringly loud playing Facebook posting notification sounds, breaking the mood.
The mobile phone just wasn’t designed by Apple, Google, Samsung, or Motorola as a home theater level multi-media machine.
The missing ingredient in Bluetooth speakers is a dedicated Internet of Things (IoT) style box that plays light and sound shows, movies and YouTube clips (like Chromecast), and has an on-line community connection. With an on-line community the experience includes discovering new and trending movies and clips from your personal tastes. And for the truly creative types, the experience lets them create their own multi-media shows and earn royalties when people run their shows.
Votsh Waves is the first product to deliver an on-line socially connected multi-media (light and sound) experience that is easily adapted by the Bluetooth speaker manufacturers. They just need to license the provisionally patented Votsh technology. It exists today!
While you wait on them, take a look at the Votsh Waves project on Kickstarter. It’s at http://bit.ly/waveskickstarter and ships to your home or business by the end of 2014.
-Frank Cohen
