Slashdot Mirror
Turn Your Head Into Speakers
Roland Piquepaille writes "A small company based in Iowa has developed products made with a "smart" metal that can turn your walls or your head into speakers. "Last August, Etrema -- an innovative technology firm nestled in the cornfields of Ames, Iowa -- started selling those chrome discs for $1,500 a pair. Called Whispering Windows, they can turn any wall, window, or drab conference table into a speaker." The author tried the technology, and even if she needed a full bottle of Tylenol after usage, said "it's not every day that your head serves as a piece of stereo equipment." This overview tells you more about this "magic" metal, the Terfenol, which is a combination of terbium and dysprosium. The article also says that we can soon expect pirated versions of Terfenol coming from China."
Now if they can just wire the Discman inside your skull someplace too..
That can't be good...
I already have a speaker, but its not in my head.
SoundBug.
Ok, so you can't turn your head into a speaker, but you can with practically any smooth surface.
And for a lot less than $1500.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
...no wonder the voices in my head sound like the Rolling Stones.
Now if they would only quit playing "Sympathy for the Devil".
-mark
and this is different from what they sell on thinkgeek how?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5a15/
except it's only $27
And to think, at first I thought the headline was referring to toilets.. now THAT would be cool!
with almost any flat surface, with this litte device, and it's significantly cheaper, at $26.99
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
I wonder...will god nullify their patent because of prior art? ;-)
Aren't terbium and dysprosium supposed to keep the the spatial distortions of the Expanse from messing with the crew of the Enterprise? Too bad cute Vulcans are allergic....
This product was already out in a device called SoundBug. back in 2002.
I seem to recall that SoundBug had poor sound quality because most surfaces and structures have strange acoustic response patterns. But I'm sure that with a bit of clever processing (a microphone and a bit of FFT magic), one could estimate the transfer function of the speaker surface, create a inverse filter that corrects for its properties, and then apply the filter to the any sound for better output.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I hear voices already. Who needs speakers? NO! They're coming!
If Mr. Anderson would have had that in Matrix, he could have really pissed of that agent in that questioning scene...
;-)
Agent: "What good is a phone call...if you're unable to speak!"
Neo turns on his head speakers
Neo: "Wadda say?"
How does compare to the much cheaper Soundbug?
And now for something completely different... a man with a tape recorder up his nose...
my head is already a bunch of speakers....at least a bunch of ppl speaking...but thats kinda teh same thing..
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
The article also says that we can soon expect pirated versions of Terfenol coming from China.
In spite of possibly losing their company due to running an insecure OS, they continue it. Though they did change the web server, but stay on the same OS. I do admire their tenacity and loyality.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The reason so many of you seem to think that Etrema's Whispering Windows product is so eerily similar to the SoundBug offered by ThinkGeek is because Etrema developed both of these products.
when you can listen to music that's in your mind here
now all we need is RIAA serving discovery documents for pieces of your brain....
In other news the journal "Nature" has an article on a research team that has used nano devices in the bloodstream that syncronizes cell membrane oscillations, creating an immersed full body sensation of any sound you chose to input into the system. Dolby Corpus 10000.1 anybody ?
"6EQUJ5"
One wealthy businessman handed Etrema $1.5 million to stop the slight vibrations on his yacht when he hit top speeds. Terfenol did the trick, allowing him to dine at sea without having his meal shimmy off the plate. [And] a local church hired the firm to build a special pew so that a deaf person could hear the service.
This interests me more than the original article. How does a speaker-like material stop vibrations? Sure sound is a vibration... but to cancel out another sound/vibration it would have play the inverse sound at exactly the same time to cancel it out.
I'm assume the pew above just converted the sounds to either physical vibrations which the person could feel... or just adjusted the frequency to something that could be better heard/perceived.
Wire this up to create a "noise canceling" device and you might have something.
inflatable speakers they have in sharper image. Bought them, blew them up, and made what can be described as headphones. The sound was insane, as were the looks on people's faces who saw me that day in the mall.
But seriously, the "turn your wall into a speaker" idea seems to pop up every 10-15 years. Let's see if they can get it right this time.
Does anyone still own a Bone-Fone radio? (Another idea that never quite worked.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's just an obvious use for magnetostrictive materials developed over decades using your tax dollars. Coming up with the new alloys is impressive, but applying it to audio applications is pretty obvious. Reminds me of the patent I read last week about companies patenting the use of tagatose (new sweetener) in breakfast cereals and beverages. Duh.
Specifically, they are intended for bass reproduction, but that's the only frequency domain where the material of the cone isn't having a dramatic effect on the sound quality, so I wouldn't necessarily want full range production from whatever random materials I can find.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
It wasn't that popular. I think he said it was called something like a "Bonophone" or some combination of "bone" and "phone", but Googling for it this morning just comes up with a lot of links to naughty sites. Does anybody know if this really existed and what it was called?
This system is not designed as a speaker, per se, but it is audible from near the wall. I have no idea what flavor of unobtanium is used for these, but I suspect they probably cost at least $1500, based on the military's track record.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
Dear stranded Time traveler:
We would send the item listed above, but security concerns have prevented anyone from sending out deliveries to that time frame. If you do manage to survive the holacaust, please get in contact with us and we will be happy to send off your dimensional warp generator.
Sorry for any inconvienence, we hope you enjoy your stay.
a local church hired the firm to build a special pew so that a deaf person could hear the service
This is the most intriguing thing about this. Would a deaf person be able to "hear" using the "head-as-speaker" technique?
Ok, so they say on their website that they have to focus on the more promising uses of the metal.
And they come up with a really expensive (5.1 * 7500 = 38250 dollars for a surround set) speaker system first. Which already exists.
Theres no such thing as pirating in China.
Some information about the bone-fone and a picture can be found here: http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/magicalgadget/inde x3.html
I remember reading a story on Chinese piracy in a business publication some years back. It talked about how some of this piracy has tacit government support. One official was asked about pirated software, and when the subject of the holographic authenticity logos came up he deadpanned, "that's what our Reflective Materials Institute is for.
...and connect it to to a wireless mike, so I can scare my mother-in-law the hell out of my house!!!
"Feed me, you sinner"
The Industrial Physicist has an interesting article (PDF file) on rare earth elements that mentions terbium and dysprosium. According to the article, 3.6 kg of dysprosium will set you back about $50,000 US.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
go and ask a real speaker manufacturer what they think of it, just stand back while they laugh at you as you talk to them about smart metals and the other bullshit this firm are dishing out
The same company makes both products:
http://www.etrema-usa.com/products/audio/
Terfenol, which is a combination of terbium and dysprosium.
Now we will have to build harvesters, and tesla coils, and send thousands of dogs to the enemies base...
-dw
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
not only here, generally IP cannot be pirated. IP is a fact of discovery, not of posession.
Less is more !
that there is not such thing as IP pirating. IP is a fact of discovery, not of posession.
Less is more !
Damn! So how do you make your speakers stay put? Hobble the legs, or what?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
From the article:
"Barry Mersky, a dentist in Maryland, bought Terfenol in 1995 in hope of creating a "tooth phone," a small device placed on a tooth that allows people to communicate in high-noise environments. Mersky's six-person company, ESComms, based in Bethesda, Md., now receives funding from the Army and Navy, whose interest was piqued after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks showed that firefighters had trouble hearing radio communications inside the World Trade Center. The dentist is hoping to have a working prototype for the military to start using by next year."
Looks like this may replace the tooth phone previously designed by researchers from MIT Media Lab Europe.
With Terfenol, you don't need an implant, but merely a plate attached to a tooth. Though there is still the question of where to put the radio receiver.
Skis have piezo-electric daming systems now. Do they work? Well, I don't own a pair. But i can explain the principle.
A piezo-electric material produce electricity when a force is applied to it (when it is bent, essentially). This is how the lighter works on a gas grill. You press a button which raps a piezo electric material, that produces electricity which produces a spark which lights the gas.
On skis, the piezo is hooked to a device that will dissipate the electricity, typically a LED which turns it into light (looks cool) instead of a resistive load that would make it into heat.
If you have a harmonic vibration, then a piezo material in the spot can turn vibrations that would otherwise propagate as waves into electricity and then remove it. That's how the skis work. If they do indeed work.
So how does this appy? Well, some piezo materials also bend when electricity is applied. So perhaps this material is one of those?
Honestly, these transducers are nothing new, if you attach a regular speaker to a window it will vibrate the window. And it likely has the same problem the previous systems have, which is that with no absolute reference to push against it cannot produce low-frequency sounds.
"if china has the metals and the formula, why would their 'pirate' version be inferior to the american version, beyond its not being american?"
Where in the article did it indicate it would be inferior? They meant 'cheap' as in inexpensive, not low quality.
"wouldn't market demand dictate the quality of the chinese ternenol?"
Ummm... no? Market demand would determine the price. Product quality might sway consumer choice to the (presumably) more expensive American version (having to pay your non-Commie workers a living wage is a mother fucker on the bottom line) but since they STOLE (or are trying to steal) the process, the quality might be comparable.
"and surely pirated is the wrong word here. they are not bootlegging consumer goods, but manufacturing a material."
They are trying to mimic a patented process, and went so far as to hack into a company's network to steal the manufacturing details. If Americans had done the same to a start-up Chinese company, you and your ilk would be screaming about what greedy imperialists we are.
"Two years ago the firm's computer system was hacked into, most likely by spies for the People's Republic of China, which, according to the Pentagon, is actively trying to steal the formula for Terfenol. Terbium and dysprosium are most commonly found in the Boutou region of northern China."
What is confusing you? Just because they have the ingredients in their backyard doesn't mean they know wtf to do with them, nor does it mean they have eminent domain over any process that might incorporate those ingredients.
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
I know you've all seen it!
You pull up to a stop light and some guy next to you has his stereo so far up and his bass so deep that your very fillings shake inside of your teeth enamel!
Well, just ONCE, I'd like this guy to turn his head into a speaker and do the same thing to himself that he's been doing to other drivers for years.
m
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Let's hope no one starts attacking people in crowds with stick-on spam-radios. I can just see poor souls wandering around helplessly with their heads turned into speakers playing ads. I think I'll stick with something safer like a good ole' flame speaker... I ran across this Flame Speaker Project
There's a discussion about how mechanical changes in the material (Terfenol-D) induce magnetic changes, which can then induce current. They mention that the same properties of the material that allow for electromagnetic-to-mechanical modulation (producing speakers) can be reversed, to allow for mechanical-to-electrical modulation (producing sensors). Thus, just as this technology can produce speakers, it can also produce sensors as well.
So my guess is (although I am totally not an engineer or physicist of any sort) that one could make sound detectors as well as sound producers using the same technology, place them strategically someplace, and use them to monitor sound sources. The speakers would then correct for the vibrational patterns detected.
They don't explicitly say that, but it's an interesting hypothesis.
As an aside, they have the most ridiculous
explanation ever as to how this technology works on a page about commercial advertising applications. I clicked on their link expecting some actual explanation of how the thing works, and instead of getting an explanation, I get a diagram of what it's doing. I hate this business-speak confusion of what and how sometimes.
Wasn't this talked about, like a few years ago or something? I swear I remember an article here, and on ZDnet about this a while ago.
IMHO this is just another sad story of a company who is going to sink because they don't understand that customers buy services, not patents. If they were smart, they would advertize the process to the whole world in a way that is unmistakable that they invented it, and they would license it in a way that is almost free - accept that they are not locked out of future innovations of the people who use it.
Even if that failed, they could do an Ely Whitney strategy, who never made a penny from the cotton gyn, but made tons from other manufacturing contracts that were given to him specifically because of his reputation.
By doing it this way, they will have neither. It is really sad to see people sink themselves like this. I guess the old axiom is true, the best way to ruin someone over is to tell them that they have rights that they don't really have (in this case, patents) and watch them destroy themselves persuing it.
oh great, so now even the unknown old fat ugly lady on the other side of the phonesex line that sounds like a horse can sound like the unknown old fat ugly lady on the other side of the phonesex line that sounds like a hot pr0nstar!
my blog
The ~NOLs are inventions of the Naval Ordinance Lab, curiously located out there in the corn fields; famously NiTiNOL and TerFeNOL, not exactly the the most overwhelmingly original names, they do sound techy.
The "latest" material, terfenol, exploits the giant magnetostrictive effect, which sounds even more brand new, but it isn't, having been discovered in the 1840s.
The high strain versions of this (and the thermally actuated "shape memory alloys") were developed in the 1940s for use in high powered sonar. They are generally used as replacements for voice coils and for the same reason. If you want to actuate your domestic structure, you can use a big one and keep it cool with LN2.
These materials are far too old to be covered by existing patents, so they're fabricated all over the world. Indeed, chinese manufacturers are in production.
Stop playing with yourself!
God? It really is you...
Listen up. Overdoses on tylenol are fatal and there isn't much they can do about it. It destroys your liver.
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
- " But that's not the biggest problem. For while Etrema currently holds a monopoly on the world's smartest metal, its executives predict that within about seven years competitors will have figured out a way to make Terfenol more cheaply--or worse, to manufacture an even smarter metal. (Etrema's scientists are already hard at work developing Terfenol's successor.)"
Without any fear of competitors, the rate of research would slow down. But because there are wolves at the door, the company will be more productive and innovative. And while it might not be this company that ultimately scores the money jackpot, humans in general will likely be better off through the enhanced development speed (speakers aren't the only application - it appears to have important ones as well).What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I don't know if it is true or not, but I heard once that the fatal dose of tylenol was around 15 capsules.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Why would I pay $1500 for a pair?
Get them here for $30 a piece.
The sound applications are neat, but...
Maybe you could fashion a blade out of a composite and vibrate it to cut turkey (or turkeys) more easily? Maybe you could vibrate it with music to see which tunes do best on which materials. Cut n rock.
Was I the only one who read: Another option would be to use the courts to go after customers here in the U.S. that might soon try to buy Terfenol and its products from the Chinese. and thought "RIAA"?
He's dead, Jim. You get his tricorder, I'll get his wallet.
Make a babe's ass go "Boom chika boom chika boom boom boom"!
Table-ized A.I.
...just let me say that this is just another reason why we're actually a cool state, no matter what stereotypical ideas you might have about us. I mean, who else would do this sort of thing if not some nuts from the heartland?
Now, on to making our heads into bongs...
"Come on Come on Come on Now Touch me Babe" might be the excuse for a masturbation addiction?
I mean, first, it costs about $20, which to me says "it's not *that* great, so we're giving it to you for cheap". And if the you were to go to the soundbug website, you'd see that it's so teen-pop-y and the tool/toy is being marketed as a "hey, if you buy this, you can impress your friends!" object.
If you have the courage, take a look at the video clip they provide... {...shudder...}
And to think I was considering getting one..
You know what I want you to do, I want you to go upstairs to that apartment where that guy keeps playing that Barry Medalo Copacabena over and over and over again, I want you ring the doorbell, and when he answers the door, I want you to stab him in the neck with a number two pencil over and over and over again because HE MUST PAY, chop him up and stuff him in the freezer and where you leave the apartment, light the place on fire!
Voices in my head, these are the voices in my head.
Read the article. The site was broken into and the formula was possibly stolen. The DOD claims china.
The real question is why do things like you exist? I have written AI programs that are smarter than some of the trolls, such as yourself.
After reading the article, the part that jumped out at me and made me want to punch it was the comfort that both the interviewer and interviewee had with the question: "Ok, now that you've developed this amazing technology, how are you going to make every facet of this amazing product proprietary so that no one else can possibly profit from or improve upon it?" Boo Capitalism...*ducks*
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Now we are going to make the skull the primary source of some of this sound and directly hit the brain.
Why do we think this is a good idea. I would be concerned about a punch-drunk generation degenerating into parkinsons dementia before they are 30 and on autopsy having brains that look like they had been in way too many fights..
"This is Jesus, Kent..."
All made in Taiwan.
... is the particular alloy being used (and, I suppose, China's potential part in things).
Conduction phones have been a part of audiology equipment for decades. They're for differentiating conduction deafness from nerve deafness.
I first encountered a stereo-capable single contact (bridge of the nose) conduction transducer at the Lake County (Indiana) county fair around 1965. And many will probably recall the widely advertised "Bone Phone" from the 90's. Yes, the same technology could turn any surface into a speaker, although a free-floating surface (such as a panel suspended by wire) worked best.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Anything that starts with "Turn Your Head Into..." I'm outta there. Bad ideas surely follow.
This is such an awesome concept. I hope they didn't do too much R&D though.. seeing that the soundbug has been around for a while doing the same thing based off the same concept..
oh well..
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
==Paracetamol (aka acetaminopren / tylenol)
Dosage: 15+ grammes, 20+ is better
Time: 10 hours fatal damage, but 2 weeks to actually die
Available: easy to get hold of
Certainty: fairly reliable
Notes: Once 10-12 hours is up, you've had it, but you still live for a week or two after that. Probably better to wait 15 hours just to make sure. Horrible side effects during this time (some of which are: acute toxic hepatitis, renal failure, cerebral oedema, intra-abdominal bleeding, aspiration pneumonia, haemophilia). Too small dose causes severe liver damage. Accidental deaths are very common. There are few if any side effects before the damage becomes fatal; occasionally vomitting and nausea.
Hmmm...a $20 device that makes things vibrate in response to music...I'm surprised it isn't more popular with the girls...parents all over the country wondering why their daughters are suddenly "really into" flamico guitar music. ...there might be a market here. ...[trying to slink away before anybody gets that]...
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A goal is a dream with a deadline