H2O/IP

AltImage writes "This interesting project uses water as an organic network between two computers. It analyzes the color of each pixel and 'prints' out pulses to the electronically controlled water valve - a different pulse pattern depending on the color of the pixel on screen."

Comments

Re:Water isn't organic..

[DeadMoose]

Water isn't organic..

I don't know, some of the stuff I've gotten out of the tap probably contains more organic material than most snack foods.

Man this one is begging for it!

[FunkSoulBrother]

If this pans out, soon we'll be able to Surf the 'net!

this is just art

[hfastedge]

I dont mean this as an insult. And its very good art, but observe:

The core technology behind StreamingMedia is a new network protocol I'm developing for water transmission called H20/IP. H20/IP functions in a similar way as TCP/IP but focuses on the inherent viscous properties of water that are not present in traditional packet networks. These properties include fluidity, heat index, tri-state properties, density difference depending on state, and surface tension. Based on the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Model, H20/IP exists as a physical layer consisting of custom-designed hardware throughputs, a network layer used to decode incoming and outgoing messages, a transport layer between messages and communication interfaces, and an application layer that allows for connecting infinite input and output mechanisms. Depending on the design of the StreamingMedia network, the data layer can dynamically adjust to each change while maintaining the integrity of the network.

This simply uses water as the medium instead of: fiber, wire, or air. Most likely, I would conclude that solid water is just too dynamic of a material to get anything useful out of it. For example, this display uses water drops, which are huge compared to electrons. Now, using electricity over water would be a little more interesting, but then it REALLY just becomes another medium for fiber wires. And if you want to get really creative, you can say that since there is so much matter in one drop of water, you can automagically make use of this inherent fact to send more data...then I say bah....because you can inherently make use of the quantum properties of electrons to get more out of them, and this is where we are REALLY going towards.

Thanks for contributing to the entropy of this planet you artist!

So: Just art...but good art. Well done!

How refreshing.

[jericho4.0]

This is a cool project. It reminded me of this project (from this /. posting. A guy building logic gates with water flow.

There was another link I can't find anymore to a lab moving microscopic drops of water around on a sillicon substrate really fast. The target apps are in biochemistry, but iirc the design used the liquid to do some logic, also.

Creepy!

[Subcarrier]

I put a contraption like this under my leaky kitchen tap and got...

HELP! I'M BEING HELD PRISONER AT THE RESERVOIR!

I keep telling myself it's just the water company messing with our heads, but...

Re:RFC for this?

[reaper20]

Yes, except that if the IP pigeons drink the IP water, the universe will explode.

Based on an old idea (Cryptonomicon)

[FyRE666]

This is reminiscent of an idea used in the "first computer" developed in the book Cryptonomicon. The RAM is a series of tubes holding mercury, which store values based upon waves introduced into the tubes which closed electical circuits (if I remember rightly). It'd be cool to see one actually working ;-)

Why water?

[coloth]

Seems to me, water was an uncreative choice for a creative project. Why not:

Wine - An object lesson in classy networking.
Milk - Don't have a cow, but your MOO just got creamed.
Diesel - Oh, you knew they were going to get into high tech somehow.
Coffee - Finally the name "Java" makes sense!
Antifreeze - Hey, it just might work!
Urine - For something that has pissed you off so much over the years

Reminds me of Soggy Noodle...

[torpor]

... a few years back during a LAAAATE night hacking session on a device driver for some hardware, I decided I'd had enough and needed to do something fun.

I unglued myself from the swetty membrane that had formed between the edges of my ass and the chair, delved deep into foggy memory banks for details on how to move my arms and legs, got up and robo'ed to the kitchen with curled fingers to make pasta. It was a LOOONG code session, damn.

Halfway back, I got the idea to use noodles to connect the device I was working on to my PC, just for fun. Easy enough to do: the serial line from my debugger to the outboard gear was just three wires.

Some avid hacking with duct-tape, judicious use of PCB-posts, and 10 minutes later, I had things working!! I could talk to my device over the soggy noodle!

So funny, sending commands over pasta!

Okay, I went home after that. It didn't work so well the next day, when the pasta had dried up and stuck to the edges of the PCB ... and I got a few odd looks from a co-worker as I cleaned up, chuckling to myself, but hey...

Re:Reminds me of Soggy Noodle...

[coloth]

That's what I call "usin' your noodle"!

Re:RFC for this?

[torpor]

Damn, we've finally invented a network where one protocol can *actually* consume another protocol.

Gotta read these RFC's ... Sci-fi cyberpunk fantasies will never quite sound the same..

IP/H20

[chrisseaton]

That should be IP/H2O as in this case IP is running over the H2O technology, as with TCP/IP where TCP runs over IP.

Re:Interesting as technology

[tanveer1979]

Yes we need it.
Imagine, just turn on the shower and you have a movie playing.
Feds at your door, just drink the water.. poof
The plus side is that now you can have internet access from your tap and finally we can stop bitching about cable companies....

Negatives:
Overclocking your AMD can vaporise your data... as if burnt motherboards werent enough ;-)

Other way around?

[alanwj]

Am I just confused, or wouldn't this be more appropriately titles IP/H2O?

Alan

Re:Imagine...

[tanveer1979]

this is certainly my first and probably my only 'Beowulf Cluster' joke

First I cant vouch for.. but definately it will be your last after you get modded to hell and back, and before you go for the ride.. dont forget to turn of that TAP, you dont want ATARI 2600 images travelling around your house.. do you ;-) ?

H2O + IP

[circletimessquare]

water plus iodine phosphide is extremely explosive.

careful, carnivore is watching. ;-P

One Ring to Transmit Them

[Spunk]

H20/IP functions in a similar way as TCP/IP but focuses on the inherent viscous properties of water that are not present in traditional packet networks.

So a Token Ring system done this way would be a viscous circle?

Re:Time

[panurge]

No, because droplets can follow one another with more than one in the channel at the time. They only need to be far enough apart to be sure they are distinguishable.

If we assume that drops need to start off at least 10mm apart, using the high school classical equation t = sqrt(2s/g), we get about .045s or around 20 drops per second. (They will be physically much further apart at the bottom, of course, but the same distance apart in time.)

Now assume we use classical serial communication, 1 start bit, one stop bit, one parity bit. That's 11 bits to a byte, or very roughly 2 bytes per second. The problem is mainly one of error correction. There is no back channel, so any errors cannot be corrected as there is no retransmit request. This is definitely not related to TCP/IP which was intended to be a robust protocol. It's just the equivalent of Morse code. Even so, at about 100 bytes per minute, and with the opportunity for compression, the transmission rate is about as fast as an ordinary Morse operator.

DoS Attack?

[Quixadhal]

So if water is the media for tcp/ip, flushing the toilet would be considered a DoS attack? I imagine flushing while someone else is showering would be a DDoS, hence the screams...

Re:Water isn't organic..

[Black Perl]

and it is ip/h2o, not h2o/ip...

Well, it should be H2O-232 because it's more like a serial protocol. It's not bidirectional, so no handshaking is possible.

Vaporware?

[T-Kir]

If it doesn't pan out, and gets a little "hot" from all the hype... it evaporates into vaporware ;-)

I just couldn't resist saying that!