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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!!
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.
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.
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)
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? =)
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.
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
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!