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Wi-Fi Communicators For the Real World
Erik_ writes: "In this most interesting article on MSN Wearable Wi-Fi - The wave of the future?, there is a description of a Wi-Fi Communicator device. Just like on Star Trek (Thanks Gene), these devices provides hands-free, voice-activated communications throughout any 802.11b networked building or campus. The company manufacturing these devices Vocera hopes to begin selling the equipment later this year. Can't wait to get my hands on some of these communicators... Beam me up Scotty."
Not like we have cell phones with internet that work nearly anywhere or anything. This is so revolutionary.
/flamebait (but seriously....this isnt groundbreaking)
That's all there is to say about this...
I used to work in a place that used those nextel walkie talkie phones, they were a pain in the ass, went out of reach every once and awhile, they were horrible. Maybe these can be replaced, but those nextel phones are damn fun for pranking people.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
...at least if the examiner is a trekkie!
I'd love to see the prior art discovery they'd send back to the applicant...
What's the correct format to quote a TV pilot episode?
And would you use a stardate?
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
There goes WiFi's reputation as a "Sexy" technology.
So, will we have to slap our left breast and look up at the ceiling while we talk?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
That sounds an awful lot to me like a headset walkie talkie. I guess the benefit is that it's Voice-over-ip. Other than that, it's not that big of a deal...
KHAN!!!!!
Well, one of these would make our little jaunt into "Warchalking" more useful, now wouldn't it?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
We are using a switched full duplex 100baseT LAN
to support our Mitel 3300 ICP with QoS tagging
and 5020 IP phones and we *still* get chop if the LAN gets super busy.
You should see the switches go nuts with blinkenlights when someone sends out a page
Given that my decently designed wired lan bogs down, how well do they think
it's gonna work on a variable rate unswitched network with 1/10th the bandwidth
- more than 2 users, and sayanora baby.
Sig's suck, especially this one.
Speaking of WiFi, since Slashdot seems to think this story is interesting (*yawn*) and a much more interesting story doesn't seem to be able to make it to the front page, I recommend checking this story out. Bottom line, a couple of garage tinkerers have managed to extend 802.11b's range to about 20 miles. Big deal, right? We hear about this all the time. The kicker is that they are actually deploying it in some neighborhoods, so it appears to be something real rather than something "we hope to deploy 5 years from now".
We might actually see universal broadband in our lifetimes! (Not that I don't already have a l33t 3 megabit cable modem, but...)
What I especially like about this is that true broadcast broadband would allow a lot of competing providers in each area, instead of needing massive investment in running wires.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Okay, I'll take a karma hit for this, but am I the only one who's annoyed by the gratuitous linking in
Many times on slashdot I'll click a link thinking I'm going to get some illustrative example or additional background, only to get a corporate homepage. Not good use of the medium, people.
offtopic -1 yes, but if I can do my part to stop this nefarious practice it's all worthwhile...
:wq
from the whitepaper:
"Vocera find a blood technician."
"Finding blood technician."
"This is sue Sue Harper, blood. tech. I am on 3A right now. How can I help you?"
"We need blood drawn from a patient in 6-103. Can you get up here soon?"
"Sure, I'll finnish here and be up there in a few minutes".
Wi-Fi cracker:
"Remember to suck all ten litres".
I was having this conversation with my girlfriend a while back.
How much do you think the vision of our future in Star Trek will and does affect the direction, form and function of our real future?
How will the starship designs in Star Trek influence real shuttle and space craft designs?
Communicators? Other technology?
Aaron
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
The problem is that the Star Trek communicators didn't use 802.11, so it would not be a prior art. And don't think I'm joking.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I hope the FCC is paying attention. Government regulation of airwaves was a good idea back before cheap digital electronics, and it still has its place, but the clear message here is that non-dedicated frequencies should be the rule, not the exception.
It seems like the endgame should be some variant ofUltra Wideband. It wouldn't broadcast in all frequencies, just a wide swath of them. Frequencies that had dedicated purposes would be outside this range. This would allow much higher transmitter power, which means longer ranges.
Then let the market jump in. Interference isn't a problem due to lowish power and efficient airwave usage. Let whoever wants to set up base stations. Use p2p mesh networking. Do whatever. The devices are cheap and don't interfere. This may be one of the technology market segments that actually acts like a market.
The badges did look pretty sexy on some of the Star Fleet officers of the fairer sex. If WiFi badges become popular, I might even consider a career as a maintenance person at a suitable WiFi badge customer service point.
"Here, let me adjust that... Oops! Sorry! I'm not usually this clumsy... Oops, there I go again! Sorry..."
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
This is the third time in a week or so we have seen people talking about Vocera and their 802.11b based "communicators" on Slashdot. This might have been news the first and second time, but at the third time, it pretty much stops being news.
I guess that Vocera's marketing is working... nice to know that the money they are spending on it is paying off for them (I guess).
Just like last time, though, I'll point out that they are not a UNIX shop, and mostly not interested in hiring people from this neck of the woods, to the point that their "careers" page won't load in many versions of Netscape.
-- Terry
will we finally stop saying "Can you hear me now? Good!"?
Join the TWIT army now!
Does anyone know if someone is producing 802.11b IP phones? We have several companies running small 3COM setups with hardwired phones and would like to add some wireless phones into the mix.
--derek
gambitwireless.com
create a pager system that uses Wi-Fi wireless networking equipment for voice capabilities
If I'm reading this correctly, the devices can only receive calls (with two-way interaction), they can't initiate them. So you would you would need a phone to contact someone wearing one of these. Wouldn't that make them less useful than a walkie-talkie (VoIP or not)?
Sounds like a great idea. They could create it, patent it, and call it a radio. I mean, how many of you hackers out there have your amatuer radio liscence? Would it really be that hard to make one voice actuated?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
A little off topic but some interesting wireless wardriving news: war-driving
HavenWorks.com/vocabulary/a-z/w/war-driving
..looks like someone off Star Trek. I'm not talking Federation here.
that the name "Wi-Fi" is utter babble?
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
These are to be used in places like hospitals/large retail stores/warehouses...
or any place you have a team of professionals that need to keep in contact quickly and cheaply.
(make your prostitute joke and move on)
Now, on another note...
How long do you think it will be before radio scanners/monitors come out that can decode these signals?
And how soon after that will the FCC make the scanners illegal?
I remember many a night editing video while listening to people order at taco bell....
create a pager system that uses Wi-Fi wireless networking
If I'm reading this correctly, this means that you can only receive (two-way) calls on this device, not initiate your own. So you would still need a phone to contact someone with one of these. Doesn't that make it less useful than a walkie-talkie (VoIP or not)?
"In my values, freedom is more important than 'serving users' in a mere practical sense." -- RMS
This is probably the main advantage to hospitals: cellular frequencies have been claimed to interfere with medical equipment. With WiFi, do you think there will be any problems? My guess is no, and this is one of the main reasons that this is a big step in hospital communications..
"The problem is that the Star Trek communicators didn't use 802.11, so it would not be a prior art."
"How do we know he didn't invent the thing?"
heh
"Derp de derp."
Cell phones interfere with certain medical equipment. WiFi does not. This will be great for hospitals.
Here, let me adjust that... Oops! Sorry! I'm not usually this clumsy... Oops, there I go again! Sorry...
Thank you for continuing to prove the stereotype true that the average slashdotter is a hard-up, perverted freak looking to get cheap thrills anyway they can.
There's no new technology here - my NexTel phone already does every part of this except WiFi. The only thing new is the miniaturization. I think this would be a pretty cool app for an internet company - I work at a company with geeks on two continents, and I'd really like to be able to do this kind of communication with people at work. They have WiFi there, and I have WiFi here, so there's no reason why it couldn't work. You could use SMTP+MIME as the transport layer if necessary.
Can you turn this thing off, what if you're sitting on the can or taking a leak when the thing goes off?
it will sound like niagra falls over the com badge
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not,) but aren't the Star Trek communication devices activated with a touch on it?
Look a monkey!
If you do a patent search, you'll actually find more than a few Star Trek done at the time of the original Star Trek.
They are mostly design patents if I recall correctly.
Of course, the Star Trek communicators won't exist until the 2400s or whenever...
Username taken, please choose another one.
What does Wi-Fi stand for? I know it's used to mean short range wireless networks like 802.11a and b, but where does "Wi-Fi" come from?
Search first, ask questions later.
I'm working on a real tricorder. I'll submit the story when it's finished.
word.
I would like to say 3 things in this post:
1. Who cares about WiFi when John Entwistle is dead.
2. Slashdot sucks a** out loud.
3. Imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
(This post is officially certified by me, Anonymous Coward, as a 100% authentic, official beowulf post. The reader is hereby authorized by me, Anonymous Coward, to imagine a beowulf cluster of the items refered to in the story to which this post pertains.)
while you're microwaving a pizza!
Look ma, a really expensive, impractical alternative to walkie-talkies and cell phones.
Seriously, I saw a demo of somebody using Ipaq's with WiFi cards as walkie-talkies. Couldn't figure the point. The setup was about $700/per, only worked when you were within range of an 802.11b base station, and had several seconds of lag (which could probably be reduced with dedicated hardware). Seemed like a technology destined to be stillborn.
As an amateur radio operator or ham. I have run accross some troubles you can have w/ a voice activated cicruit (vox). :)
.wav file) compress it for efficient space (ie .mp3) stream the file to the other machine with oh say shoutcast/icecast. Building something like that into a pda like the Ipaq/Journada or a Palm. While a project like that would be a bit much to build for just a normal conversation the geek factor is quite good.
Most amateur radios and commercial ones to have a ptt (push to talk) button on them but occasionally some people forget the other aspect which i refer to as rtl (release to listen). Since most radios are simplex or 1/2 duplex you need to unkey the radio to hear the other person (and/or make sure they haven't switched frequencies and left).
A trouble w/ a vox circuit in that implimentation will really show up in a mobile environment. if you go past a construction site you will find that instead of the conversation you were listening to, you are now transmitting all the noises arround you.
On a duplex conversation, like a phone, it is always transmitting and recieving at the same time. This has an advantage of you can interupt the other person but there's a tendancy to not pay attention to the other's conversation as the tendancy is to ramble on more instead of shorter messages w/ a pause between.
Additionally for a situation as above like driving by construction some people will forget that they may not be able to be heard over the noise. the natral reaction to that is to talk louder so you can be heard but that only makes things worse. Radios and cellphones have really sensitive micropones these days and talking louder will only distort what you are trying to say.
Digitally encoding a voice for radio communication has been done and is being done by hams, it's not all that new. It is quite possible to send somtihng like that by 802.11 even using existing technologies. Record the voice to a digital format (ie
my $.02 anyway
73 de VE6OMJ (= best wishes from me)
orin
" there is a description of a Wi-Fi Communicator device. Just like on Star Trek"
So I'll be able to buy a "cell" phone that will let me talk to anybody in the star system, even and especially without line-of-sight? Sure as hell beats being out of service when I drive more than ten yards from the nearest interstate...
I don't want to sound stupid, but I've apparently been left out of the loop on the "wi-fi" thing. I didn't get the memo... can somebody please, just tell me what "wi-fi" is?
thanks
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Here's the thing about this technology (however massively it's been pimped here lately) that most folks seem to be missing. It's not meant to replace your cell phone, or your pager either (for the most part). This product is targeted first at hospitals where regular cell phones are banned (not sure if the interference things is true or not but it's a risk we don't really need to be taking IMHO). The way that I envision this being used is that docs, nurses, technicians, etc. have these things on and can communicate quickly and easily with each other.
Think about how inefficient it is to have someone have to take their gloves off in the ER to pick up the phone and dial the blood bank, Radiology, OR, etc., then re-glove and dive back in to trying to keep someone from bleeding out on the table. Imagine that with a voice command, the attending/chief resident, head nurse, intern, whomever could just say, "get me the blood bank" and make the order like that. Not only does it speed things up but it utilizes an otherwise under-used resource.
The trick of course will be to prevent people from using them to chat with friends..."yo Jim...I'm off in 20, wanna get a beer?" isn't really the best use of this tech.
E
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
Maybe it's a hint for the new Star Trek film, which trailer came online yesterday, and what a kickass trailer it is too.. "Sir, are you sure this is a good idea?" "Well, we'll see won't we Data." Boom!!!
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
As if there isn't enough 'Electronic' Leashes in the world now a days. It looks cool, but I have my doubts if will even play a part in any practical company. Most places that require this type of reliable communication already use Hand Radios (Walkie Talkies), and I don't think being able to give voice commands ("Find me a manager", or "Clean up in Isle 5") will lure most away from something seemingly already dependable. And that's not even talking about the cost to set this all up.
But I agree, it is a very novel, Star Trek style, gadget, that has some use and meaning, but I don't see it going too far outside the bounds of the Techno-Hip companies.
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
Still don't get it? Say it out loud.
I've always wondered about that "touch start" thing. You must touch your badge to start communicating, but how does the computer know when you've hit the end of the message. On the show, they just start talking to someone else. If the computer is smart enough to know the end of the message, it should be smart enough to know the beginning also. (Kind of like the phone company - "You must press a "1" before dialing the number.) I guess I'll just have to wait for RFC 43532159 to find out.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
My 802.11b PC card had some stern warnings against having the antenna part that protrudes from the laptop against your body for more than about 30 minutes at a time. It claimed the access points and being a few cm away from the antenna were safe.
So what's the scoop? Were the risks in the manual bogus? Would you want an always-on high power microwave antenna against your body all day, Star Trek communicator style?
Wonderful. Now I can be on call even when I'm in the head. Lovely.
I'll carry the thing for about ten minutes, as long as it takes me to flush the little POS...
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
I don't think so!
Seriously (for a moment)...
Prior art can't be just an idea described in, say, an SF novel with no details of how it works. For example, if someone comes up with an inertialess drive, nothing that E.E. Smith wrote would invalidate a patent on it. To get a patent you need to disclose your best preferred embodiment; that is, the best way you know of that the invention can be built or made. Prior art, likewise, has to do the same.
It'd be nice to see a better understanding of how the patent system worked, especially amongst those who flame it at every opportunity!
IANAL, but I *do* write technology patents for a living...
ben
ben_ the technologist and platform agnostic
Eh? Answer me that then.
Better off buying a Dreamcast!
Wireless Fidelity. WECA's mission is to certify interoperability of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) products and to promote Wi-Fi as the global wireless LAN standard across all market segments.
With omnipresent slashdot, that'd be Mod me up Scotty!
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
In the tech manuals (yes, I was a lot geekier in high school), it said the computer kept the channel open for about ten seconds, and could tell if you were addressing the other end of the comm. Obviously, that's not presently feasable.
funny munging
Prior art can't be just an idea described in, say, an SF novel with no details of how it works.
Obviously my comment was only meant as a light joke, so of course you're right, prior art needs to disclose sufficient detail to invalidate the novelty (or unobviousness) of a given claim.
For the most part Star Trek episodes don't provide a good enough description of the "enabling" technologies to prevent patents in teleportation, for instance. However, certain letters, memos, and works of fiction have prevented (or have been cited by) a number of patents over the years. Arthur C. Clake's famous letter on geosynchronous satellites, and a fictional procedure for raising sunken ships both come to mind.
All joking aside (for a moment), with so many overly broad technology patents being issued these days, I do think that the example of communicators (along with a lot of other prior art) could bear on the novelty and unobviousness of certain broad claims for a wearable, wireless means for hand-free communication. Narrower claims of implementation would obviously be available, as would design patents for form factor.
This is analogous to Clarke's description of Comsats. Although technical (and not fiction), his letter was brief and his inability (in 1945, before orbital launches and transistors) to fully describe or enable his invention would have likely prevented him from receiving a patent on his scheme.
However, his short description was sufficient to prevent Hughes from obtaining broad patents on the geosychronous aspects of their working Comsats in the 1960's. I'm sure that they were able to get numerous patents on more specific details, but Clake's prior art denied them their broadest claim.
Likewise, while Star Trek or Dick Tracy may do little to describe the inner workings of their technologies, I'm sure that certain fictional ideas can (and do) act as limiting prior art, if only in a very broad sense.
IANAL either, but I do have some professional familiarity with the system, and I do not try to flame it at every opportunity (just point out flaws, concerns, and the occasional humour).
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
not you, i know this because it is true why dont you write your sig in hex it would save on bandwith