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Paper Mounted CPUs
Roland Piquepaille writes "Rafe Needleman discovered an interesting young Swedish company which is printing really cheap chips. "The company, Cypak, has technology to mount a very small microprocessor, which it created, on paper (or inside a credit card), as well as a technique to print sensors, switches, and very short-range antennae on the same paper, using special conductive inks." Here is one possible application designed for drug trials. "Drug trials need data about how and when subjects consume the drugs being tested. In this application, a pill pack registers when individual pills are popped out of their plastic bubbles; it then can beep and ask the user a question like, 'Are you feeling better today? Press Yes or No.' (The answer buttons are on the pack itself.) When the patient visits the doctor, the package is placed on a Cypak reader and the data is downloaded to the physician's computer." Visit this page for more information about Cypak or read the full Business 2.0 article."
I am waiting for smart toilet paper so it can tell me when I have wiped enough.. No more brown streaks!!
Talking cereal boxes, anyone?
for the buffer overflow errors from happy prozac patients pushing yes one too many times.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
At last, I can have a paper aeroplane that I can program to seek and destroy.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
For uninitiated readers, this is the catch phrase of current student TV favourite David Dickinson on his UK "Bargain Hunt" show.
More seriously, one of these would be a really good idea for books - you could get it to remember which page you were on without a bookmark (or bending over the corner of the page, as is my habit).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I wonder whether or not something along the lines of a Mad fold-in will hold overclocking potential....
- - Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand. - -
so you dont have to
Cypak mounts
CPUs on paper. Can disposable PCs be far off?
Rafe Needleman discovered an interesting young Swedish company which is
printing really cheap chips. Here are some excerpts of his article,
"Coming Soon: Printed Computers."
Here is one possible application designed for drug trials.
Rafe Needleman is quite optimistic about Cypak's future.
More information about Cypaq's intelligent pharmaceutical packaging can be
found at their Electronic
Compliance Packaging webpage.
Couldn't this also be used for some unsavory applications? Such as: making sure you read your printed EULA, tracking paper files through a building, etc.
...ladies and gentlemen, the real tablet PC...
Finally you can really get down into getting A's in the exams... Teacher thinking: "Why is that kid over there tapping on that blank paper?"
It seems like the only possible innovation here is in the conductive inks. Effectively, they using a paper substrate rather than FR4 (or other PCB material) and the conductive "ink" rather than copper to make connections. The ability to make a very thin chip and embedded it into a thin form factor is not new.
The more interesting thing is the non-traditional markets that are being explored. They're not trying to do another smartcard rehash. (although they appear to talk about smartcard-lke devices on their web site)
I can use use especially programmed paper as scratch paper on my next math exam...
Just need to figure out a way to make the "your answer is wrong" warning a quiet one.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Why did you say i can find more infomation on the cypak technology on your blog when all you do is quote the business article text? there is no more information on your page.
has slashdot become a blog traffic generator ?, and they wonder why people don't subscribe when all we get are links to non related kids journals
Where would you like to go today?
A: Fill a prescription
B: Test your blood
C: The morgue
anyone want a howler?
As with all cutting edge technology, this will be popularized by the porn industry. can you imagine what kinda marketing info they could get just off their magazines. like how long you really read their articles :). How much time youve spent on each page, maybe an auditory warning if your on a page for too long. :) Anyways sounds cool. hope we dont get conspiracy theorist coming out of the woodwork saying that this will automatically be put in money to track you. :)
later,
epicstruggle
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
An interresting spinoff of this could be the disposable computer. Like disposable cameras and things like that, an item such as a notepad (PDA) could be designed for a very short lifetime. Write your meeting-notes with a normal pen, on your notepad. After the meeting, you take your notepad to your computer, press the transmit button on the pad and discard the page(s) you've used up.
"Paperless office" anyone? =)
Can I reprogram my $1 bill to be a $20?
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Would this kind of tech make great for polling? Advertisement polling or other ways of making polls using magazines / newspapers. Now that we are at it... how about intelligent advertisement? The intellipage(tm) asks questions and responds to your needs regarding which flavour of their toothpaste you will like. Possibilites are endless.
What's with Finns and Swedes?? They seem to be superior in every technology field. Finland and Sweden are neighbour countries if you didn't know. I visited Stockholm once and used a ferry to get to Finland.
Finally I'll be able to get a fucking paper plane in the air!
what kind of logic can they hide in toilet paper??? Scary! You do your thing and the toilet paper claims that you didn't wipe your ass well enough.
this article looks much like a well-targeted commercial! how many of you slashdotters will tell their bosses about this thingy?
"I see you're taking an overdose, can I help you take an overdose?"
+AJ+
I certainly hope nobody thinks this is revolutionary?
Set your time travel machine to the 60's. The 1960s. I would have loved to be my age (30) in the 60s. EVERYTHING was already done back then...
TFT history
Just search for 'paper' in that article if you're one of those hyper-active now-now-now-now types.
Isn't this pharmaceutical application stupid, when they could just include a card that you mark with a pen?
Or, how about the doctor just asks you the next time you see him, since that's when he'll get the card anyway...
they'll reach ignition temperature whenever the cpu comes under load ;-)
I'm thinking things that help you fold as you fold. "Sink here...Not like that, idiot."
From the FAQ:
"...our COM/ActiveX interface component can be used to get data from the ECP directly to Excel for example. Some VB scripting is required to do the plumbing with the specific customer application."
So until somebody writes the requisite API, your application has to be Windows-based to read patient data from these packages. I called that ironic because their site is apparently on a Linux box.
by accident..may I have another one?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just an observation (okay, a gripe): Why is it that every time someone makes an announcement about printing electronics on paper, the press starts talking about "disposable PC's right around the corner?"
Silicon is pretty cheap, right? But that one fact hasn't made PC's disposable. And none of these companies (that I know of) are planning to print PC's anyway--they're just talking about cheap stuff like lightweight CPU's, sensors and tracking circuits. Why all the hype, you press guys? Didn't the dot-com debacle teach you anything?
So now we can finally have those annoying singing cereal boxes just like in the movie.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
I don't know about other applications, but I'd like to see something like this to help patient compliance.
over 50% of patients are non-complaint with their drug regime and/or instructions. I am not sure if some pill-pak reminding the patient would help or not.
I provide printed medication instructions, verbal instructions, and instructions on the bottle... and people STILL don't take their medications like they are supposed to. This leads me to do things like treat Strep throat with single-dose Intramuscular Penicillin injections... one dose, done... takes non-compliance right out of the picture.
No matter how many times I tell people to take all their medication... they take it 'till they start feeling better, then stick the rest in the medicine cabinet. The next time they get a "sore throat," they promptly bust out the old prescription and start taking pills. I find this out when they show up a few days later, wanting to know why their sore throat isn't clearing up like last time (answer: because it's viral). Of course, we'll also never know if it's viral or not, because the antibiotics they are taking screw up any throat culture I might do.
They either need to make a pill-pak that self-destructs after a period of time, or one that repeatedly screeches "I'm expired! Throw me away now!" in a high, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard voice.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
And if we can print it, there must be some way to see/edit the underlying circuitry, hence open source printable CPU's could be around the corner...
What is better that recompiling your kernel? Running it on your own variation of the Intel architecture.
Of course these "tape antennas" are $19.95 TV hoaxes. I'm sure this will happen one day, but I doubt if the company has anything behind their theoretical trial at this point.
Also modern chip lithography isn't much different from printing.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
It seems like a great idea, and some /. posters have already got some applications for it in mind, but what powers this, is the battery printed as well? If it gets really inexpensive, will there be a disposal problem.
Semper ubi sub ubi
Serious medications or trial medications from most resources like Pfizer have been coming in little 30 day pill boxes for about a year that do "alarm" when needed. and DO document whether the little "box containing the pill" was opened within 30 minutes of the alarm. My grandmother has such a dosage meter/alarm for her parkinson's medication. It looks like a 3D calendar and she has to go exchange it for the "next month" every month - the pills are already placed in the proper compartments. (Some days have different dosage and some days have different medication)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Imagine a Beowulk cluster of these things.. It would trulyly be a Von Nueman machine. If it needed to speed up its processor it could just issue print commands to the printer... If it had itself in a pile on the floor and had contacts ready it could add on to itself automattically. (Bring back the old paper reels with the perforated sides... Ideal for such a thing.)
Correct me if I'm wrong but by not taking the entire regime you risk not killing the strongest bugs in your system. This means you are effectively breeding stronger bugs and improving their resistance to antibiotics. On the long term this bodes badly for the effectiveness of antibiotics. Another case of individual ignorance building up into a public expense.
Sounds great... until your doodle in the corner accidentally overclocks your daily minder, schedules you for lunch with 65536 different people at the same time and bursts into flames.
Now they just have to figure out how to shrink a power source down small enough to match. With this technology, the size of a battery would be a limiting factor in thickness. Not only that, but a battery contains toxic chemicals that would be paired side by side with one of the most thrown away materials of our day: paper. This might also throw a wrench into recycling..not only because of the battery but because of the material(s) used for the processor and electronics.
Still pretty cool thought, but perhaps a warning "do not burn this computerized paper in your fireplace" would be in order so people aren't getting battery bits shot into their eyes.
Remember, aluminum cans in this bin, CPUs and newspapers in this one...
Circuits/Sensors/Antennae on PAPER
+
Missing Children "Have you seen me" postcards
=
Total Information Awareness
or...
In Bush's America, your mail reads YOU!
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
But the really cool thing about this is that if it's printed on normal paper, you can most likely recycle it. This will be a lot better than current PCs that are very difficult adn costly to recycle.
~Jon~
This space for rent, inquire within.
You raise good points. I sincerely hope that the idea of electronic parking tickets that they floated on the website is replaced in most cities by an entirely software solution. (Email you your parking fines. no more paper tickes on your windscreen which the local hoods can steal for pranks)
On the other hand, what if you use pressure sensative paper as the worlds's most portable scanner? Write your meeting notes on normal paper, with the smart scanner paper underneath like that old fashioned pressure activated carbon paper that people sometimes use to duplicate reciepts.
the pressure sensative paper stays blank. At the end of the meeting, file your handwritten notes and plug in your pressure sensative mat to your laptop/desktop/whatever. the dozens of pages that you stored in it are copied across, and the handwriting recognition goes through in a few minutes. presto!
(if you're really adventureous, you could get the pad to have a built in wifi antenna. then you'd never have to leave the meeting. when you run out of paper, just use an inkless stylus on the pad directly, and hope you remember where you've written... or maybe make the top layer smart colour change paper.)
Might be handy for those business people who don't want heavy laptop bags or bulge inducing pdas ruining the line of a good suit. (on the other hand, most people like that who I know just get their PAs to carry all their junk for them. oh well. maybe the new tech might still sell on early adopter chic.)
That I ideas are often better on paper than on silicon.
Why bother.
Those are actually a real godsend to senior citizens, just like those "a box for every day of the week" pill boxes. They are mostly for the people who are non-compliant through sheer forgetfulness (which includes a lot of us as we age...).
Even so, I wish they could do something about the "hassle factor." People simply don't take their meds because it's inconvenient, or too much hassle.
A good example is Acyclovir for herpes... you have to take it five times a day. People don't take it because it is inconvenient, and I tend not to prescribe it for this very reason. If I have my choice, I make it as easy as possible for the patient; given the option, I opt for something like Famcyclovir (can be given three times a day, compared to five).
You are correct; compliance can be improved somewhat with the type of product you mention. but there is still that hassle factor, and the fact that unused medication accumulates in people's medicine cabinets, waiting to be used inappropriately. I still would like to see the self-destruct option, it might save someone's little nephew when he goes looking in the medicine cabinet for some tic-tacs. That happened to me as a very young child... I sucked down a whole bottle of thorazine. I was lucky enough to survive. Some kids aren't so lucky...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
First of all, what are the implications of a packet/bottle/box of pills spurting out questions whenever you pick them up? I mean, how the hell are you going to keep paranoid skitzophrenics on their medication?
"My meds, man... They're talkin' to me. No, really... They're talking to me man."
I suppose the potential is the same for stoners, but that's another bag of beans.
Secondly, weren't we supposed to see paper printed cell phones in every vending machine already? I remember a few years back some woman had figured this application through, and the media was running around with their typical un-educated stories: "Soon, you'll be able to print a cell phone from your own printer right at home."
Still, this is existing technology, and has been jumped upon before, with no results I've ever seen.
Ack!
You pull out a note pad and begin to write...
Dear Sally,
And your paper clip stands up and says "It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like help?".
You throw the paper clip in the trash, but before you can get rid of it, it winks at you. Scared yet?
This space for rent, inquire within.
...if you pop too many pills in a certain time frame...does it have a built in cell phone to report you to a substance abuse center?
Does this meen that we will be able to order a A4 sheet of cluster any time soon?
First it was credit cards that tracked how you spent your money now it could (will?) even be paper money... fits in nicely with the total information awareness program. Drivers license / national id card with gps?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Paper airplanes with guidance systems!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...Whatcha gonna do with the added heat from overclocking it? put a heat sink on it? what if its too much heat? You got yourself a great little match now don't cha? I'd love to see the converation you'll have with your insurace agent after the house burns down:
Agent: "What happened here?"
You: "Well I was overclocking my Mad Fold-in.."
or better yet
Agent: "What happened here?"
You: "Well I was overclocking my Playboy centerfold..."
Agent: "Overclocking eh?"
Every time I see an article about these conductive ink on paper circuitries, I get to wondering how feasible it would be to get a pack of these inks for an inkjet printer and print your own simple integrated circuits. How large a piece of paper would you need to print an 8086 clone (and would it burst into flame from the heat released)? If hardware becomes trusted against its user, could we print a useful (if slow) processor using this technology?
This article was in PC Magazine about a month ago. Can't get a much larger circulation than that. Is this what /. has come to? News posted one month after the mainstream media has it?
I used to work a summer job at a screenprinting shop where we printed the circuit boards for remote controllers and other such things. the trick is finding something that will draw small lines with conductive ink.
-Cnik
Here in Porto we already are using paper tickets with a memory chip for ticketing in the public transport.
These chips are dormant most of the time and wake up when they are near the equipment that reads the data. The circuit is made with a special silver ink.
Each ticket costs around 50 cents for 176 bits of data.
For more info check out www.ask.fr (silver ink)and www.rafsec.com (thin copper)
cheers!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A Beowulf cluster of these! Definitely a novel approach, and you could rack-mount them on your bookshelf.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Sure, like all technologies it can have as many bad applications as good ones.
When I read that they had antennas and buttons, etc. I suddenly thought of electronic ink/OLED-type touch screens, perhaps to be used as wireless x-terms or such? I figure that perhaps the power supply problem could be solved by powering through induction(is that the term?) - like how my electric toothbrush charges (no plugs or wires - just sit it on the base) - or perhaps the battery could be contained in a clipboard? Hell, you could probably fit it all into a cardboard sheet!
This and the printable-screen technologies are seriously cool and exciting things. Perhaps the potential to use such technology to 'invade' privacy isn't a bad thing? Age of transparency anyone?
Bleh, just image the possibilities!
I cam imagine smart, reusable, "paper" with an embedded chip that can receive Wi-Fi - and the printer is gone! The computer transmits directly to the paper!
What qualified this technique as "cheap, and is it available to the home consumer?" I'm guessing that they probably don't have a kit for my home inkjet that would allow me to print mini-computers.
Still, if one could get a printer for say,
Note: With the current trend, I wouldn't be surprised if "CPU printers" cost $100, but the paper is $150/ream and the equivilent of ink somewhere in that range as well...
I thought one of the cool things about technology was moving towards a paperless medium.
Its all just smoke and mirrors.
Just photocopy your CPU and before you know it you have a Beowu...good grief! Is that the time already? Must dash!
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
This could be used to thwart counterfeiting I would think. If each legal note came with some sort of hash that could be verified through a checksum of some sort.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
I just imagine what the security personnel at the airport would think when they discover you are carrying an electronic drug delivery system. I have just been thinking about things like this because I have been traveling a lot lately (not basketball!).
Does this mean that the paper my EULA is written on will have it's own EULA? (Which will have its' own EULA... so on and so on... ok I have to lay down now, my brain hurts.)
You can buy magnetic toner cartridges for laser printers - this is the same toner used to print account numbers on checks (MICR = magnetic ink character recognition). Does anyone know if this type of magnetic ink would work for circuits? If it would, an open source CPU could be as available as any other picture.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Even regular inks can be pretty environmentally hostile when disposed of in landfills, etc... to the point where you have to be careful about what kind of paper you put in your compost pile. Load inks up with enough metal for them to be conductive and it seems like they could turn out REALLY toxic.
Sean
So how about printing microchips on paper on your office printer:
Hired another programmer? See this stack of paper? It will become your desktop - this sheet your CPU and this one is your RAM chip. If you want a bigger monitor grab that tabloid sheet of paper (11x17) or better yet, stack 4 of them together.
All you need is a keyboard and a mouse - we probably can print a keyboard and real men don't use mice anyway!
You can't handle the truth.
That gives you the warning every time you pull a cigarette from it.
Get a free ipod.
Just another way for Lexmark to sell you a printer for next to nothing, then screw you on supplies...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This idea looks great on paper....
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
We won't need psychiatrists anymore. You just get a prescription for you anti-depressants and the pill packaging will come with a copy of the doctor program from emacs!
Now when I flame that my mac wipes its ass with intel chips, I won't be kidding!
God I love technology.
So how long before "smart-books" that catalog your reading habits are mandated in libraries?
Does it mean that if we print our source code, we will be able to run the program inside the paper ;-)
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will
be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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