Analog Approach to Displaying Data

Lurker McLurker writes " BBC News reports that Ambient Devices, the MIT Media Lab spin-off which brought us the Ambient Orb, have developed a new product, the Ambient Dashboard . The orb changed colour to display information at a glance, for example turning red if the stock market is going down. The dashboard has three displays, similar to speedometers or barometers, to show the information of your choice, from stock market volumes to the pollen count." As a proof of concept, this is neat stuff. However they seem awful pricey.

Comments

Fun for now.

[ActionPlant]

But if you had one for everything, wouldn't you just be surrounded by a lot of (eventually) confusing colors? I still prefer a single device with a sensible display. Sure, this looks fun, but after the novelty wears off I think it'll be not only annoying but inexcusably inaccurate.

Damon,

Analog all the way

[matth]

Of course.. we live in an analog world.. we'll never be able to take things in digitally because we don't work digitally. Even your computer needs to be able to display in analog (speakers/monitor) before you can figure anything out. We can't do anything in digital... :)

Re:Analog to Digital to Analog

[finkployd]

So let me get this straight...

We use some type of fancy sensor to convert a real world analog signal to digital information, then we convert the digital information back to analog to humans can understand it intuitively?

You pretty much described every electronice device in the world that has a user interface.

Finkployd

I love the marketting spin:

[stienman]

5: How does the Ambient Device get information?
Via a nationwide wireless network called the Ambient Information Network. It works in a similar way to cell phones and receivers.

Translation:
There's a pager receiver inside. We send out national pages every few minutes which essentially contain packets of information on each of the possible displays.

It's still an innovative use of a nearly obsolete network. However, they can't gurantee free service for life though. When they go out of business, your nifty device is nothing unless you hack a computer interface into it, or get a pager account and find a way to attach the receiver into that account.

But it makes me smile to hear them say they have a network all for themselves - giving the impression that they own or control the network their messages are sent over.

-Adam