This week only, London's Tower Bridge is the world's largest Bluetooth device

While wireless headset manufacturers battle one another to shrink their wares until they completely disappear into your ear canal, organizers of the Switched-On London lighting festival (not named, unfortunately, after the excellent column by NPD's Ross Rubin) have taken the opposite tack: for one week in February, they've transformed the famous Tower Bridge into the world's largest Bluetooth device (narrowly edging out the PS3). Using multi-colored lights strung across the length of the upper walkway, technicians have created a gigantic interactive exhibit wherein sensors located at either end detect travelers' Bluetooth-enabled gadgets (cellphones, laptops, PDA's, etc.) and then track their progress in pseudo-real-time as they move across the bridge. Visually, the movement is represented by a uniquely-colored pixel appearing at more-or-less the same spot on the walkway as the device; to a faraway observer, it would look like this single "pixel" was making the journey from one end to the other. In order to ensure device anonymity, the Bluetooth sensors only send a derivative of each device's MAC address to the bridge's main controller, so consider this a Bluesnarfing safe-zone. If you're in the area and want to check this out -- or love Bluetooth enough to buy a plane ticket (any BT fanboys out there?) -- you'd better hurry, as the project ends and the bridge goes dark tomorrow.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

[andrew @ Feb 16th 2007 12:42PM]

Actually, the sensors are on the London Bridge. You walk across that bridge and then see your progress on the next bridge over, Tower Bridge, which has the LEDs on it.

[Ollie @ Feb 16th 2007 12:57PM]

Evan, are you sure this isn't another example of Big Brother Britain? I was expecting a 'Zomg, they can see track how far across a bridge their citizens are now!!!!111one'... ;)

[Faisal @ Feb 16th 2007 4:42PM]

LMAO at PS3 comment..haha

[Shunnabunich @ Feb 16th 2007 5:05PM]

I'm a huge BT fanboy, but I haven't heard of him doing any shows in London in the near future, and certainly not one on a bridge. :)

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Feb 16th 2007 11:50PM]

Dude, wouldn't it be cool if you could make the bridge go up and down by using a Wii-mote?

[Russ @ Feb 18th 2007 2:26AM]

there's a video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnq1TBefX7Q