#728 – Space Age Bluetooth with Alex Haro

Welcome Alex Haro, CEO of Hubble Chris welcomes Alex Haro, co-founder and CEO of Hubble, to discuss the ambitious task of connecting billions of Bluetooth devices directly to space The “banner level spec”: Hubble enables any off-the-shelf Bluetooth chip to communicate with low Earth orbit satellites using a software-only firmware update Alex describes the system as a global “Find My” for enterprise that also handles sensor readings and arbitrary data Addressing the “Bluetooth in space” skepticism: Alex explains that while the standard is optimized for high-fidelity audio, the chips can be repurposed to emit a custom software-defined waveform in the 2.4 GHz band The true innovation is on the satellite side: massive antenna arrays with thousands of elements perform advanced digital beamforming to pick up weak signals (0-20 dBm) from hundreds of kilometers away The “Dinner Table Analogy”: Traditional networks “yell” to be heard, but Hubble has the device talk slower (lower bit rate) and enunciate (error correction) while the satellite uses thousands of “microphones” to isolate a single voice Why Bluetooth instead of LoRa? Hubble co-founder and CTO of Ben Wild, is the architect of Amazon Sidewalk. He chose Bluetooth because it is globally ubiquitous and the 2.4 GHz band is unlicensed worldwide Technical trade-off: While LoRa uses spread spectrum chirps, 2.4 GHz allows for much smaller antenna arrays on the satellites compared to the 900 MHz band The hybrid network approach: Devices use the same SDK to communicate via a crowdsourced terrestrial network (apps and gateways) or directly to satellites when out of range Constellation roadmap: Hubble currently has four production satellites in orbit (covering the globe twice daily) and aims for 64 satellites by 2029 for continuous real-time coverage Removing the GPS chip: By using Angle of Arrival (AoA) on the satellite, Hubble can determine a device’s location to within tens of meters, reducing BOM costs and power consumption Future “Reverse GPS”: Once multiple satellites are overhead, Hubble can combine AoA with Time of Flight (ToF) measurements for even higher accuracy Network capacity: Each 10km satellite beam can handle roughly 100,000 simultaneous devices before hitting saturation, with terrestrial gateways offloading density in major metros Dealing with the “grumpy engineer”: Alex discusses lowering friction for developers by investing in the Zephyr Project and partnering with Texas Instruments to pre-flash the Hubble stack on Bluetooth SOCs Stack coexistence: The Hubble SDK allows the radio to time-slice, maintaining a standard Bluetooth connection to a phone while sending satellite packets during idle periods Payload specs: Data packets are 13 bytes, transmitted at 400 bits per second Business model: Pricing starts around $2 per device per month and scales down with volume to hit the “price elasticity” needed for tracking billions of assets Enterprise use cases: From tracking shipping pallets to monitor loss, to cold chain monitoring for pharmaceuticals and agriculture The SpaceX experience: Alex describes the “visceral” feeling of the double sonic booms from the Falcon 9 landing during their launch party Find out more at hubble.com (or hub of BLE)