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The Lamps Are The Network
An anonymous reader sent us an interesting story that talks about using the flickers in flourescent lamps to do something beside's give me headaches. They actually are using them as a network to send things like audio. There are numerous possible applications of this, but I'd tend to think some sort of other standard that would let us eliminate those cursed lights would be better. Regardless, it's a damn cool hack.
polyp@tesco.net writes ...
Aren't we forgetting something fundamental ?
These things only broadcast data not receive it. To use these thngs as a true network one would need to get these babies to receive packets as well as transmit them!
That would be called "talking". Someone tried it and it's supposed to work but we evolved to use slashdot instead nowadays.
What about those poor blind people when the bulbs are burned out?
I dunno, I just thought this was funny for some reason.
Mr. Wizards World on Nickelodeon told of this a long time ago.
In that story, it was grocery stores that were using them automatically update the price of items on the shelf. Instead of the normal tags on shelves, each item had a small LCD device in front of it that could "read" the flucuations in the flourescent lights.
I saw this program somewhere between 12 and 15 years ago.
In related news, it has now been scientifically determined that "now the RIAA can deprive us of some basic facet of everyday life" trolls, are, in fact, no longer funny.
--
That, in a nutshell, is what hacking is all about.
Whee! I thought I was the only geek to do this!
Castration of office flourescent light tubes is usually one of my top three goals when I start a new job:
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
All I can think of is Tom Hanks escaping that awful flourescent lighting in Joe versus the Volcano. If only Meg Ryan could somehow be attached to the application of this technology...
<peering about> "Wow! Why do all the chicks suddenly look like Meg Ryan?!"
-l
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Great. Now when they are about to burn out, all we will get is Nine Inch Nails... err, I mean static.
I remember this being one of the experiments you could do in the 1970s with one of those $30 children's 200-in-One electronics project kits. You'd use an incandescent bulb, if I recall, to transmit input from a microphone, and you'd receive it through a photocell, convert it back to audio and pass it to the earphone.
I think it was one of the Israeli kits with the pinholes for sticking wires in, rather than one of the spring-connector Radio Shack kits. In the end, it's the same process as AM radio, but using visible light as the carrier instead of waves in the radio and microwave parts of the spectrum.
Not everything electronic came about in the post-microprocessor era.
Um, dude, you are so completely wrong. Grocery store 'smart' price tags use the same RF network that their handheld inventory scanners and bar-code readers use. Ever notice that the "Scan your stuff here to see the price" box has an antenna sticking out the top?
There is an article about these systems in the current 2600: "Secrets of Electronic Shelf Labels".
-- Spring: Forces, coiled again!
I hae to say, pretty cool.... but anyone who has messed with this knows that I.R. works great, uses less power and will be far cheaper to impliment. Plus works when the lights are off. What about those poor blind people when the bulbs are burned out, or during a power outage? I.R. transmitters can run off of a battery for hours. plus installing them takes moments and doesn't require an electrical refit of the entire building.
Neat, but not really useable. I give kudos for trying.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hmmm...Years ago, five(ish) I read an article about using this technology in supermarkets to continuously update the electronic price tag displays on supermarket shelves. So the POS (Point of Sale) system would track the stock levels/availabilty of items and adjust the price accordingly.... Oh, I can't spell :))
H&Ks Garf
Imagine a similar light-modulation encoding scheme where your car's current speed, vehicle ID number, and other specific information is transmitted from headlamps and taillights.
Imagine that this encoding and transmission was required by law and monitored by police and traffic authorities. Now our cars are tattle-tales and the need for fancy radar monitoring is greatly reduced. Kinda scary thought if you don't like speeding tickets! I suppose this would be hacked eventually.
But the same technology could also be useful for "convoy-ing" vehicles in an auto-pilot fashion. Perhaps light is not the best signal for this (radio or IR more reliable?). But wouldn't it be nice to not have to constantly tickle the accelerator and brake in stop-and-go driving? The car in front of you would tell your car that it was slowing down or speeding up, and yours could automatically adjust. Throw in a proximity detector as a failsafe and you are partway to an auto-pilot.
Enough random thoughts for today...
Mike
Well if you bothered to read the article you'd find tha answer. The idea came from him working with the new Ballast which increase the HZ rating (to reduce eye-strain) seperating it from the natural HZ of the electricity. Realizing this seperation was possible, he figured he could produce signals by flucuating this HZ.
...I know somebody that is actually transmitting stuff over the ether using radio waves....
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Suppose the lights turn red when downloading p0rn?
"...Roxanne! You don't have to put on the red light. Those days are over. You don't have to sell your body to the night..."
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
Notice that GPS receivers have problems indoors. If there were a standard way to broadcast location information, GPS receivers could use this data when it is available.
The ILID Partnership (or what they are doing) may be what you were thinking of. They have their Indoor Light Interactive Display system, which uses the Fluorescent lighting already present in a building to transmit data to electronic shelf labels, keeping their prices accurate. They did a lot of R&D proir to the systems being made available to consumers/businesses in 1999.
For more information, see http://www.ilid.com.au/
Now they no longer only know what you're buying, but exactly where you are, to the nearest light-fitting...
Does that mean the slimy sales people will start showing up in person?
I don't get it. Why would you give a warning of a warning?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
..but I don't know where. When I heard about this a year or so ago, the application was in retail stores - grocery, clothing, etc. The application was to put price tags (solar powered with a cheap, efficient LCD readout, somewhat like calculator display) next to all the items and send out price updates to merchandice through the lighting system. Transmit a new price with the item's barcode and wherever the item(s) was(were) in the store, the prices would adjust accordingly. Since the e-tags (catchy name) were solar powered, they could be encased in plastic so if they were hit by a shopping cart or dropped, they wouldn't need to be replaced.
At the time, I thought this was a great idea since it would save a stock person from having to lug around a printer and try to get the prices right. Instead, you program the barcode of the item into the electronic price tag, then put it with the merchandice, and all your stock people have to do now is go around looking at inventory.
Anyone have some venture capital to spare?
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
What I find to be odd, is that snopes lists the claim as "false" but the text following the claim indicates that it actually did happen. What's the deal?
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
This is all well and good, until the evil guy with a flashlight and a laptop decides to send a blind person flying down the escalator without warning...
I've had this sig for three days.
Amen, sir/ma'am.
/. gets plenty slow after that :(
However, you can block most of those types of stories from the user prefs page, if you choose.
However,
Flourecent lighting drains the life right out of me. The building in which i work is kind of neo-modernesque, with almost no 90 degree angles and NO florecent lights, anywhere. Its an office building, but we use plain old overhead lamps hanging from the celing with soft-white lightbulbs. Its plenty dark for my tastes, but the building is laid out where the sunlight comes in, indirectly, all around to provide illumination. Then most everyone has a small indirect lamp around them, somewhere.
:)). Anyone else have any great ideas on how to light a workspace?
Its a very soothing environment in which to work. (At least, environmentally
I also take ideas on how to keep people out of my cube, and to stop them from sneaking up behind me without a complex series of mirrors.
I am sure many of you have heard the conspiracy theories surrounding flourescent lights....
;)
Many have suggested that The Man (tm) is controlling our thoughts with flourescent lights.
On a serious note though, it might be interesting to see what one could do with this technology in a covert fashion. I.e. fashion an audio/video bug self contained in a balast and install them after hours. Attach a receiver to a telescope, and you have very hard to detect surveilence.
More Caffeine. NOW
I'm currently working on a system to make my wearable PC location aware inside the building here at work by placing small IR transmitters around the place. The wearable senses the signal, looks at the modulation, and launches appropriate apps for the context (ie a notetaking app comes up when I walk into the conference room). With this, it could be much easier to implement, just replace a ballast in a light in the appropriate area instead of worrying about getting power to your IR transmitter. Cool.
Clearly, the solution is to bolt the receiver to the top of their skulls.
Man, why does nobody ever remember to credit Nikola Tesla with the things he invents, such as RADIO, AC ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION, REMOTE CONTROL, and, of course, the still popular (after 100 years!) fluorescent LAN! Sad thing is, it's not a conspiracy any more... he really has been forgotten.
I dunno. Maybe I'm just getting crabby, but these automatic "hey maybe the RIAA will outlaw this " don't even rate a smile.
Likewise all the "I'll patent breathing!" posts.
I can't figure out whether the posters really think they're original, or just cynically fishing for mod points.
"Fluorescent lights are everywhere," he says. "The infrastructure is already in place."
Sure, except for the fact that you will need to hook all your lights up to a no-doubt really expensive computer, with no-doubt really expensive software.
That's like saying, Everyone can get DSL, look, they already have phone jacks!
Troy
Now they no longer only know what you're buying, but exactly where you are, to the nearest light-fitting.
Ingnoring your paranoia for a second, and focusing in the technical aspects of your argument:
"They" would know better than "to the nearest light - fitting". Effective wireless networks have considerable overlap, rather than tangents where transmission radii intersect.
Using this overlap, then, "they" could triangulate your position within much cliser than "to the nearest light fitting". Try within the nearest 2".
Anyway for a lark a friend of mine built this humungo tone generator and connected it to his house mains .... then in the wee hours of the morning used it to send morse across town .... by turning on and off all the street lights in his neighborhood ....
Your backside emits a controlled burst of a carbon compound called methane through a shutter called the anus. It quickly spreads around the area, where it is (hopefully) picked up by other humans with a device called a 'nose'. This nose sends signals along nerves to your brain, where the intended message is quickly decoded and the recipient yells, "d00d, wh0 f4rt3d?!?!"
Therefore, farts are nature's PING.
We already do this.
Your backside emits a controlled burst of a carbon compound called methane through a shutter called the anus. It quickly spreads around the area, where it is (hopefully) picked up by other humans with a device called a 'nose'. This nose sends signals along nerves to your brain, where the intended message is quickly decoded and the recipient yells, "d00d, wh0 f4rt3d?!?!"
.sig: Now legally binding!
The design meeting:
So what will people use this thing for?
hmmm how about another delivery system for Bluetooth?
...nah.
How about a communication alternative for the navy?
....mmmm no that's no good
hmm
How about a way to alert blind patients with Heart Diease of impending transplants availability as they walk along the mall escalator?
BINGO!
Someone you trust is one of us.
It's not a warning of a warning, it's a longer warning. Traffic in cities is complex. A longer warning would be beneficial. Simply making the yellow longer would not help, because the lights would be even more inconsistant than they already are, and if you see the light is yellow and didn't see it change from green, you have no idea at all how much time is left.
Data sent via small carbon atoms in the air? :)
In a bold move, Mr Lite brite, representing Incadescent bulbs everywhere has filed suit in federal court today. "We are asking for a complete cease of data transmission through Fluorescent lights" said Mr Lite brite at a news conference this morning.
He went on to say that "This is a new form of aparthied!, If this is allowed to continue, Incadescent lights everywhere will be swapped out prematurely from there life spans and replaced with Fluorescent lights that can transmit data as well as provide well balanced illumination for billions of people around the world. Us Incadecent bulbs will be quickly replaced and stop manufactured and we shall die out, I simply can not allow this type of genocide to continue."
Lighting Analyst B. Franklin worries that this law suit if it prevails could set back new data services 15-20 years, GE's stock tumbled 20 points on the news as well... developing....
>I'd tend to think some sort of other standard >that would let us eliminate those cursed lights >would be better.
... the T5 series of flourescent lights uses a digital ballast and eliminates both the hum of current fluorescent lights and headaches associated with them. They are also much smaller, higher efficiency, and full spectrum (they worked great on my Seasonal Depression)
.. talk to GE. Currently they are the only ones with the capacity to actually produce them. Unfortunatly, Phillips has been offering them for cheaper .. even though they don't actually know how to produce on a market scale yet and therefore aren't making them available on the market.
Actually there is
Why haven't you seen any you may ask? Well
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Hmm can you say piort art? :-)
We did this when I was a wee 'un with flashlights and the neighbour's kid, after dark.
"...your...mo...ther...is...stan...ding...right. .. be...hind...you...you...mor...on..."
The next step, you realise, will be coded message to international intelligence spies sent through disco lighting.
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Not that I'm paranoid, or anything...
This could be used as a covert method of distributing "Secret", or "Top Secret" information. (OR even "Company Classified" data.)
Just buy a new ballast for your desk lamp, wire it (covertly) to your PC, and then make sure your light points towards a little bit to your window. Then aim a telescope at the window from another building/hill, and then hook up a PC to the telescope.
Of course, I'm sure the government has been doing stuff like this for years for foreign agents. But if you can't bring your briefcase out of the building, then this would be an ideal way to get the data out!
CSG_Surferdude
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Somehow I don't see airports or hospitals installing special flourescent lamp networks when they could just throw together a simple radio or infrared system.
Got Rhinos?
Because flourescent lighting is annoying in terms of flicker and color temperature, it would be a brilliant notion to replace them with superior alternatives.
However, to supplant flourescent lights, any solution must be superior in terms of the benefits building owners perceive: lower energy costs, and longer bulb life. Note that while pricey sockets is a damper to adoption, flourescent lighting costs a packet to install already, so over time a better solution is possible. The ideal is a matching form factor.
So, that in mind, possible solutions include
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
Damn, now where are my moderation points? That's the funniest thing I've read in the last 7.4 minutes!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
One nice application for this would be in transit systems, which often already have LonWorks/Echelon networking over the power line for sign control and such. Ballasts equipped for LonWorks could retransmit to mobile units to provide destination info and such for the handicapped, retarded, or merely lost.
Realistically, though, this sort of stuff will be done using the cell phone network and GPS. It's not worth the infrastructure investment.
Once the (read: any useful) technology is available to help the handicapped it'd be politically incorrect to not have it installed in all public buildings.
Eh, I dunno. How many intersections near you are equipped with beeping crosswalk signals? There's also a system similar to this that "reads" street signs for blind people (provided that the sign is equiped with a transmitter) though I don't think it's too common except in major metropolitan areas.
The simple problem is that there just aren't enough blind or otherwise disabled people to justify the cost of installing these sorts things everywhere. Handicapped parking and ramp access are more feasible because they're less specific to any one disability. On the other hand, areas that tend to deal with lots and lots of people (and therefore more disabled people), like airports, are more likely to adopt such a system.
--
not necessarily ...
Take Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, it has several great examples of instances when you need to transfer data and normal methods either aren't available, or can't be used (ie. sending messages via a deck of cards).
Using lamps might seem a little McGuyverish, but it certainly has it's uses.
_f
Here in San Diego we just had all of our green stop lights (go-lights???) replaced with LEDs... The red were already LEDs.. I would imagine you could modulate those LED bulbs a lot faster than a flourescent.
Hmm... That sounds like a nifty way to pass traffic data to a car... You could even tell the car "Hey, I'm about to turn yellow" thus giving the driver more information to better decide his speed...
Now that this is public, can I use this as prior art when someone tries to patent it?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I can't stand the flicker of flourescent lights either. At least with computer monitors, we've had the option of getting from 60Hz (which is "good enough" for some) to 75+Hz, which is far better. Those that claim the human eye can't see past 30fps are just plain wrong.
So, an idea I've had recently is this: why not just overclock flourescents? Running at 120Hz (a 2:1 rate) would probably make them far less annoying to most people. While there may be an energy crisis in CA, more people (like me) might consider them if they weren't so darn headache-inducing.
Nathan Mates
...theyll have both better uptime *and* better downtime than you.
IP over electrical lamps is boring.
No, really. Just today the IESG has approved for publication a new Informational RFC: MPLampS: Electricity over IP (with an MPLS control plane).
From the document:
-- Stanislav Shalunov
But it's still cool.
John
John
This was shown on an episode of "Beyond 2000" years ago, where it was used in a supermarket to change prices on little LCD pricetags on the shelves. If it got hot outside, while a few keystrokes, a grocery manager in the back could up the price of soda $.10 or whatever. And all of this was done by manipulating the fluctuation of frequency of the fluorescents in the building. Pretty cool.
thelocust[dot]org
I just feel the need to say that the Incandescent light bulb should have been banned 20 years ago.
Sure flourescents have a flicker problem, but thats just because the USA runs on 60hz.. THERE is the problem. (Don't you think electricity would transmit more efficiently at a higher frequency?)
If every house switched one 100 watt incandescent to one 30 watt flouro, that would save 70million watts just in the united states. (Thats 70million watts 24/7) Of course this translates into so many million tons of carbon being released into the air too!
Oh, and another thing, we have enough power here. Otherwise we would be in black-out right this minute. We just need to stop being stupid about so many things.
If every house built generated 100watts (say one major appliance or a water heater was required to be solar.) Well, that would actually be more than 100watts, but you get what I'm saying? It should be law that any house built must have some form of solar/renewable energy.
We are so stupid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
I would fully support any effort by the RIAA to eliminate fluorescent lights to prevent file-sharing. It would save me the effort of looking for a ladder to remove the tubes from my office ceiling.
air and light and time and space
- MayorQ
...a project proposed when I was at university to use radio interference from network traffic on the ethernet cabling to provide a crude paging service. A remote device would listen to the interference, recognise id codes and read messages - not the actual network traffic, but the buzzes created by sending alternate blocks of data. Or something like that. I don't know if they actually got around to trying it, but I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.
1/120 second is just a bit over 8 milliseconds. "Speed[ing] up the flicker rate to milliseconds" just doesn't seem like a huge breakthrough, somehow...
--
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
woohoo secret messages all the way, who needs a cell phone now baby? :)
Have a wireless broadcast only network throughout the area, and use the lights strictly for location information and downloading to the palm. It would be easy to have a master computer doing everything. Even alerting emergency prodedures to individuals.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Kid? Are you still online? Don't lie! I can see the light's still on!
You just program the ballast and replace the old one with it. From then on this light continuously broadcasts its short data sequence, over and over again. No network attached, no power supply, no batteries. Just a slightly more expensive electronic ballast.
The idea is to "tag" areas and have receivers which can use the location information to give advice to the handicapped (like "you're supposed to be in the kitchen and you're not"). The technology could be used to distribute more data, but for this application it's just used as "low-res indoor GPS".
Wouldn't we have to hook up the lights to a UPS to keep the network up? I'd hate to have to put that many generators in a building...
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
I think this has to go in the same category as genertaing power by putting solar panels in front of your TV and driving 10 miles away so you can recycle $5 of cans to save the environment. It's just not worth it (and I know I'm not alone here).
Besides, how long before you figure out the transfer rate and make all of Marketing's lights blink on and off every second by transfering them large files of 0's followed by large files of 1's? Oh wait, that could be a good thing.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
It's data encoding/hiding of the neatest sort :)
It's fundamentally different than IR; imagine, for example, if street lamps using this technology had localization data encoded into them?
Of course this would only register at night, but imagine if you your car could tell what streets you were approaching? Consideing how difficult it is to read street signs at night? Or if the lamps had more intelligence, if the lamps could relay traffic conditions to the cars below? Accidents, etc?
Or if this were hooked up to traffic lights?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Its only a matter of time before Microsoft produces a "light server" effectively leaving us all in the dark.
I agree. And I am sure that it will be more off than on.
When it's on, 85% of the servers will only be able to emit a dim blue light
--------
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Gee, and I though they were already being used by Space Aliens to broadcast voices into my head.
Guess now I'll be stuck with..
"our plans for world domination zzzz any users out there got p3rn zzzz me too zzzz jello and mayonnaise."
Oh well, there's always aspirin.
Beware typoes.
this sounds like a nifty hack, but the applications they are talking about could be done with any sort of transmitter. While I can see the benifit of being able to use existing structures (the old style lights), it seems to me that it could be just as easily done with a little black box.
besides what happens when the bulb burns out?
Guttermouth is a really good band.
Umm... not that it matters, but in my experience many businesses, schools, and companies will let bulbs flicker forever as they are dying. i.e. a bulb that is half lit because the other bulb is out or because it is nearing the end of the life of the bulb. Does anyone know how this weould affect the distortion of the data or how the range or effectiveness of the network would be affected by this. also, in places like California, with rolling brownouts, how many of the lights will have to be on a backup for the network to still be effective?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Also I have seen an example of something similar involving analog info via light. My physics teacher rigged a LED to a variable resistor attached to a radio. A solar panel picked up the LED's invisibly varying light and played it on a speaker. Not as useful as straight-up RF but it was pretty cool at the time.
--
--hongpong.com
As compared to large carbon atoms?
----- One piece short of Legoland
"Little old man injured today after taking his medicine in the middle of a busy interestion. His motive for the location is still unkown."
"Ouch"
Murphy's Law of Copiers
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
In related news, RIAA has demanded that all lights be turned off immediately and permanently, because they might be used to transmit copyrighted music.
Yes, they can finally send us back to the dark ages.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
This isn't very practical, all of his scenarios could more easily and reliably handled with any type of transmitor. Why use a bulb? Nifty? Yes. Useful? No.
This is great, now hookers in the red light district will have a better uptime than I.
Strippers and Uptime. heh
Once the (read: any useful) technology is available to help the handicapped it'd be politically incorrect to not have it installed in all public buildings. That'd be one freaking huge pay day for the company and a totally non-competitive market to boot.
I'm just imagining the kind of gateway that could bridge my IP-over-carrier-pidgeon and IP-over-florescent-light networks.
My company just bought 60 high dollar cubicles for a new customer support office we just built. Each and every one of those cubes has built in data/phone/electric, which kinda negates the idea I'm about to espouse, but each and every one of them also has a 3' flourescent lamp and accompanying ballast.
I've 'retrofitted' my signifcantly older cube with a $10 flourescent tube. I'm certain it wouldn't be that difficult to replace the ballast with one of those mentioned in the article.
Can anyone say 'Lan Party'?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Not necessarily. You just need intelligent omni-directional receivers.
For example, I have a network of 5 lights, each with a flourescent tube and 360degree receiver. Each tube broadcasts a packet on a tokenring like schedule. One part of the packet is instructions for passing the token, the next part of the packet is data. Wash, rinse, repeat, around the ring.
While the article talked about broadcast applications, this style of communication would be ideal for small general purpose lans.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Just FYI... the urban legends web site seems to say that this never really happened.. at least not in great quanitities.... http://www.snopes2.com/radiotv/tv/seizure.htm
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
Imagine the fun.
Instead of paper pricetags on the front of the shelves, each item had a small, solar-powered (plus battery backup) LCD pricetag. The tags each had a unique ID, and a receiver on the top. Price updates could be propogated through the flourescents, and the prices would automatically match what the item would scan for. They estimated the cost savings would pay for the system in less than a year.
Nope, no sig
Somehow I don't see airports or hospitals installing special flourescent lamp networks when they could just throw together a simple radio or infrared system.
The point of the system, as outlined in the article, is that it's cheaper, and easier to retrofit to a building than bluetooth (or some other wireless system.) For "incrementally more" than the 20 dollar cost per lamp of upgrading to nonflicker regulators, the network can be installed. Infrared isn't terribly efficient, because it's fairly focused line of site, slow, and expensive. Overall, this sounds like a VERY good option for retrofitting older facilities with networks. The only drawback is that they're one way...
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
I've been getting messages from flourescent lights for years.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Great, but could these micro-bursts of light send someone into an epileptic fit, like those Japanese cartoons used to do?
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Ahh, the good 'ol days....
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
So that's why "blinkenlights" is more associated with networking than front panels these days.
--
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
Wireless applications already exist, that wouldn't be crippled by line-of-light problems. If someone really wanted to provide the disabled a service, they shouldn't make it depend on having the recieving device exposed, or pointed at a light source...
Great... now when my company gets around to installing the microchip in the back of my neck, they'll be able to use the lighting to track how much time I spend in the can...
Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but there's almost no infraestructure in place. You still have to carry the data there. There is, IMHO, absolutely nothing that you can do with this idea, that you could not do better with a little infrared coded light source. I mean, what's the point? You save nothing, you have still to lie the cabling and the data infraestructure.
Only in the case of locating devices, like in an airport, could be argued that no data is neccesary, and the info could be hard coded in the emitting bulbs. But even there the savings are not too big, and are outweighted by the problems of maintenance that you find when using a device for two completely unrelated functions. Another type of locating device could be arguably better.
The technology to help handicapped persons to find their way around is here from a long time. The only thing needed is a common standard and a clear will, or rather the other way around. No amount of new gadgetry is going to change that basics needs.
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Why not use infrared? When you've already got many times the emitter power in the ceiling for room lighting, a separate IR emitter system looks like a waste of money (and electricity).
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
- You get a lot of transmitter power (several WATTS per tube), and you already owned the transmitters.
- You can arrange them in itty-bitty "cells"; each lamp can be transmitting something different, such as location codes. The limited range gives you better resolution.
- For applications like translations or transcriptions, you don't need two-way service; it's overkill.
- A receiver that can pick the signal out of the fluorescent emissions can be ultra-low power (the multi-watt transmitter does the work) and dirt cheap.
Maybe Tommy B. needs to exercise the parts of his brain that are still working, and that exercise is part of his recovery program. Reminding him that he's supposed to be someplace soon and telling him how to get there gives him more exercise than a chaperone. If he goes out of the rehab unit, you can always have an el-cheapo car-alarm transmitter alert the staff to go pick him up (runs on two button cells and costs a few bucks, already has the spectrum allocated by the FCC).And who cares if it's not a commercial success? It's fun and thought-provoking.
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Explains why I have been getting "Kill, Kill" messages from them for years
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
Now the lights are talking! I can see the music, man. . .
I think I'll stop here.
Here in brazil it's obrigatory to keep prices updated in the shelves in the supermakets. We have two choices, or we keep it updated, or we come back to ye-old-price-label on each product.
Of course supermarkets won't come back to price-labels. So, they tryied many different solutions. One of the solution is use fluorescent lamp flicker to send data to digital price-informers in the shelves.
I have never seen any kind of thing like this working before. But it's really a nice idea.
Imagine, you pick the product from the shelf thinking that it costs $1.00, and by the time you pay it, it's $1.20!!!
Don't worry, I'm to bored [to|every]day
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
The vibration of a string, long a symbol associated with guitars, violins, and other stringed instruments, may give new freedom to the handicapped, thanks to a low-tech startup that sees the strings as the perfect transmitters.
Talking Strings, a Cambridge-based MIT spinoff, is developing a local area network that uses fluctuations in thin strands of thread to transmit data. Inventor, company founder and MIT professor Steven Dweeb predicts the technology will be a boon for the disabled.
For example, he says, shoe strings could direct a blind person carrying a special receiver-worn as a badge or held like a PDA-to the correct gate. Thick metal "round wound" bass strings attached to a person's eardrum could broadcast enhanced audio to the hearing disabled, or transcriptions to the deaf. And research published this month suggests that the technology could greatly improve the rehabilitation of persons with traumatic brain injury.
Hallelujah
In his MIT laboratory, Dweeb recently demonstrated his invention. First, he pulled out a 2 foot strand of waxed mint dental floss. "See?" he asked. "A normal piece of floss. You probably have some in your bathroom."
Next, he picked up his receiver--a black coffee can with a small hole poked in the end. From a few feet away, he tightened the string and plucked it. Twangy music blared from the can. Tinny, but clear, came the familiar chorus from Handel's Messiah.
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Sounds awesome! Imagine... Bausch & Lomb routers with Rayban packet filtering!
Free Beer!
You forgot to mention that both of Linus' parents were members of the Finnish Communist Party.
Although physically capable of caring for themselves, people with severe brain injuries often lack the cognitive and memory skills to manage their daily lives...
Man, I have the same problem. I thought buying a Palm would help. Maybe I need to invest in some of these thing to keep me on track.
I just never realized that I might be suffering from head trauma. I think I am going to go get an MRI or something...
DocWatson
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
He claims that an application would be a data network on an airplane, saving the need to run miles of wire. But what would you do with such a network? Get rid of the intercom? ('Heh, honey! I got mail!' [open laptop] 'The captain says to put our trays in the upright position and that the no smoking light is now on.')
And while I ranting on the comparative uselessness of this otherwise neat hack, why is every semi-useless device targetted at the 'disabled' market. Is it because they expect that the cost of these contraptions will be carried by insurance companies and non-profit organizations and therefore more likely to be accepted? Or would it be that they figure people in desperate situations will pay for anything. Think about it. Here is a device that delivers a low-bandwidth (it uses ELECTRICAL WIRING, FGS), shared-medium network. A standard wireless network would provide for bandwidth overhead, would probably be cheaper (compare the range of a wireless base station to the number of flourescents in your average hospital hallway) and provide TWO-way communications. While it's nice that they have a device that will help Tommy Braindamage find his way to an appointment, shouldn't someone be keeping closer tabs on Tommy if he is this brain damaged? Shouldn't there be a way of finding Tommy in case he exceeded the flourescents range. (Tommy: "Gee, where am I. My PDA doesn't give directions anymore. Look at that pretty big truck coming right at me" [further brain damage insues])
It's nice to see some good hacks, but not every hack can be a commercial success.
Its only a matter of time before Microsoft produces a "light server" effectively leaving us all in the dark.
But Mom, I can only do this work at night - no, I'm not doing an caffeine-fueled all-nighter for the hell of it - DON'T TURN THAT LIGHT OFF I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF A SAVNo route to host - connection closed.
Still fun as an idea, though =)
43rd Law of Computing:
Linux wrote itself? damn! that is one helluva kernel!
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"i was saying gnu-rd"
EH? SPEAK up SONNY I can HARDLY HEAR YA
NO, my "CLAPPER" works fine DAMMIT!!! BUT everytime I clap it drops my DAMN INTERNET connection!
Actually, pumping Muzak or something similar would be about the best application for this technology. Obviously, 2-way communication is impossible here. I envision Museums using this to replace their tour guides. You can flicker a light by an exhibit, and your Personal tour guide via headset tells you all about it.
For example (this isn't nearly as far fetched as it sounds): What if, in their ever increasing drive to get people in department stores to buy stuff, they figured out a way to use the flickering as a means of transmitting a subliminal message to shoppers? I can just see it now, they could time the flickering to the waves produced by a voice saying to buy a certain product, a kind of subliminal "Attention Kmart shoppers..." sort of deal.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
and I thought the flickering lights were worn-out tubes.
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