Jon, indeed having a network has distinct advantages, as you say, you can control devices that you cannot reach directly, and also sharing devices is much simpler.
But those are is not the reasons I brought forth in my post.
Wi-fi has better speed, and better handling of distance, and better co-existance. These advantages are present in a typical one to many network, AND a peer to peer network.
One major issue is things like sound. A very reasonable idea is “sending” the sound from your throttle to the loco. You could use a very simple decoder and basically a receiver for sound all on wi-fi… there’s plenty of bandwidth for several locos, unlike bluetooth. The range on bluetooth for high speed data like audio is very short.
Bluetooth really came about because of the promise of under $5 transceivers… well, Wi-Fi is there now, with all of it’s advantages.
Also, ultra low power is really silly when you are pulling an amp from your loco’s motor… so Bluetooth does not have an advantage. There are other technical issues where Bluetooth is the wrong solution, like having to run 2 different modes of communication on Bluetooth, one for range running the motor and a different one for audio…
So, it’s not a simple peer to peer vs. network answer, there’s a lot more in this… and don’t get me started on Bluetooth’s lack of security.
In any case, there’s no simple right or wrong answer, but I’ll take Wi-Fi any day over Bluetooth unless I have to leave a sensor sitting out in a field for 10 years waking up once a month to report the temperature. (and even then Zigbee and other mesh networks would be better, like the one my electric and gas meters are on)
Greg
p.s. my trains are on 2.4 GHz Zigbee
