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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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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 ....
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.
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....
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?
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 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
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 is great, now hookers in the red light district will have a better uptime than I.
Strippers and Uptime. heh
If we could just harness the power of air pressure, I think we could develop a local area data network. By modulating the air pressure at different frequencies, it might be possible to transmit data at a reasonable rate.
Dancin Santa
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.
Now the lights are talking! I can see the music, man. . .
I think I'll stop here.
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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