Boston University Working On LED Wireless Networks

Madas writes "This article on Absolute Gadget details how researchers at Boston University's College of Engineering are working on devloping wireless networks that use LED lights instead of normal radio waves. This research apparently has other uses in the automobile industry. Apparently the LEDs could warn you if the driver in front has put the brakes on so could avoid hitting the car in front. Personally, I'd use the vision balls that are in my thought box."

Comments

Brake Lights

[arizwebfoot]

Apparently the LEDs could warn you if the driver in front has put the brakes on so could avoid hitting the car in front

Dude aren't those called brake lights?

--
Oh Well, Bad Karma and all . . .

Re:Brake Lights

[internerdj]

So you are the guy driving most every car that was on the road with me this morning?

Re:Brake Lights

[hey]

Could be used to communicate the rate at which the brake pedal is pressed.

Re:Brake Lights

[Anonymous Coward]

Vision balls?

Single point of failure if you ask me. What type of nerd are you?

Re:Brake Lights

[Deadplant]

One with a pair of vision balls.

Re:Brake Lights

[MightyYar]

The problem for me is if I rolled up on a random car and the brake light came on, I would have no idea whether it was on full brightness or some dimmed level. I'd have no choice but to act as if they had just stomped on the brake... same as today.

You could change the number of lights that come on instead of brightness. This might work if the light size and number of lights were standardized, but even then you wouldn't really know what the breaking characteristics of that particular car were. You could mitigate THAT by tying it to an accelerometer instead of the brake pressure.

But then you'd still have to do studies to see which way was safer :)

Re:Brake Lights

[kesuki]

should have RTFA, this is about using LEDS over ambient lighting, to broadcast data via power lines, to every light in the room, which is then received by every data device.

weird, but a quite a bit different from IrDa for one, it's using visible light. i can't think of any real reason to be broadcasting large amounts of data to multiple devices in a single room for consumer markets, but for instance a usb dongle on a laptop, and everyone in a lecture hall could receive all the notes from the class all at once, while listening to the lecture.

Vision Balls?

[dmomo]

> Personally, I'd use the vision balls that are in my thought box."

Personally, I think the zipper gets in the way.

Trust issues

[psydeshow]

But the question is, do you REALLY trust the car in front of you? What if it just randomly transmits a "braking now!" message in order to cause other cars in the vicinity to put on their brakes?

It would be cool to see what you could do with this to improve traffic flow and autopilot in a controlled environment, but out in the real world the trust issues get pretty dodgy.

Hey, I've got a great idea!

[XxtraLarGe]

They should make the LED's look like characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force!

Amazing

[Dan East]

This is amazing. Maybe they can put this technology in a small box that I can point at my TV so I don't have to get off the couch to change channels. Maybe they can use IR LEDs to reduce interference from ambient light which is mostly in the visible spectrum.

Stupid summary

[hcdejong]

Cars communicating with each other is a good idea, and being worked on. Signalling that a car is braking is one obvious use, despite the stupid comment in TFS. Having the car react automatically to the car in front saves the 1+ second reaction time of the human driver, making you less likely to rearend someone. The only drawback is that you're relying on external inputs. This system won't stop for a pedestrian, or an older car (which doesn't broadcast its intentions in a machine-readable way), for instance. Radar seems a better bet for this particular application.
But there are more uses for a network between cars. Relaying congestion data is one, you could synchronize cars so they run at the same speed instead of harmonica-ing all the time (prevents traffic jams), etc.

Using LED signalling instead of radio might be a good way to avoid the problems with RF (interference, limited number of channels available).

Here's a thought...

[cjhanson]

I've had the idea for a long time that the brake light system should be an LED array, which would get progressively brighter, or fill more area, or by rapid blinking, indicate the rate at which the driver is attempting to decelerate. An inch of light indicates "I'm slowing a little" and 6 inches of light indicates "I'm stopping now".

Go ahead and patent this, Microsoft.
LED by example. Get it? Okay I'll stop.

Re:IRDA Anyone?

[ceoyoyo]

These look pretty. Maybe they'll use blue LEDs. Everything is better with blue LEDs.

Forget the network

[chord.wav]

Put two white leds in the rear bumper and a wiimote between the headlights of each car.

Oh, so YOU're the guy ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

with the braille instrument cluster.

Re:Oh, so YOU're the guy ...

[Bishop Rook]

As funny as that observation always is, consider that:

• Walk-up ATMs and drive-up ATMs frequently use the same interface and same keypad, so it's just cheaper to make them all Braille
• It's not just the person in the driver's seat who can use a drive-through ATM. Somebody sitting in the driver's-side rear seat can use it just as well

There are often reasons for silly things...

Re:Oh, so YOU're the guy ...

[19thNervousBreakdown]

The passenger's side can use it too! There's very little that's more hilarious than driving backwards through a crowded ATM. The best part is staring straight into the person "behind" you's eyes. I find an absolutely blank expression is best. Don't smile. Don't frown. Just stare, and drive backwards.

A word to the wise though: don't try this if you've got weed in the car. Let's be honest, if you're thinking about this, chances are pretty good...

Re:IRDA Anyone?

[argent]

There are certainly things you can do with bluetooth that you can't do with IRDA. I wouldn't want an IRDA headset, and I wouldn't use it over a distance, but BT gets used for all kinds of things that USB (yes, real wires) Wifi, and IRDA are better for.

Printers? Stick them on a network, don't wire them to a computer. If you want wireless access to a printer, use Wifi and Zeroconf/Rendezvous/Bonjour.

Headsets? Perfect application for Bluetooth.

Sharing files, PDA to PDA? You *want* short range and directionality. IR is ideal.

Mice and keyboards? Been there, done that, got the dead batteries and incomplete mess

2005: Been There Done That

[cmholm]

I knew I had seen an led-based point-to-point networking system described somewhere, and after a few minutes on hackaday, here it is, straight from 2005. Best part is, the linked to Ronja project is open, free speech-wise (and free beer for the major league scrounger).