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What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It

Posted by samzenpus on from the looking-behind-the-curtain dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Artist Nickolay Lamm, a blogger for MyDeals.com, decided to shed some light on the subject. He created visualizations that imagine the size, shape, and color of wi-fi signals were they visible to the human eye. 'I feel that by showing what wi-fi would look like if we could see it, we'd appreciate the technology that we use everyday,' Lamm told me in an email. 'A lot of us use technology without appreciating the complexity behind making it work.'"

8 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Er.... wifi IS radio... by jerel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This quote is a little off: "The distance between wifi waves is shorter than that of radio waves...". It is radio, at 2.4 GHz. (first post?)

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    Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
    1. Re:Er.... wifi IS radio... by black3d · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, there's a lot of technical errors in the article. All we know for sure, is that he can photoshop rainbows onto photographs. I'd take anything else stated there with a grain of salt.. Most of the "technical" information about wifi in the article is incorrect.

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      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
  2. It would look like light by tom17 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Surely it would just look like light (with a different 'colour'). Things that block it would not appear to give off light, things that allow it to pass would appear to glow, and things that reflect it would just be visible if there is already some ambient wifi 'light' to reflect.

    Is this actually how things work at these lower frequencies? Or would it work completely differently in regards to how it refracts/reflects etc?

  3. Re:Huh? by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I could always see it that way. I thought it looked that way to everyone? I always wondered why when I took a photo I wouldn't see the waves in the photo.

    I think it's just your dope supplier playing pranks on you.

    anyway the picture is cheesimusmaximus. bullshit scifi drawing - the waves would go so fast that it would color just everything in rainbow hues if it worked like that. in the pics it's also quite projected.. along flat wavy planes.

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    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. Is the article confused? by black3d · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >The crests of waves is translated to a 1 by a computer, and the the troughs equal a 0.

    So, every Wifi signal is "10101010101010101010101010101010..."?

    --
    "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
  5. 100% inaccurate. It's art and is not reality. by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No reflections, no lobes from the gain antennas, no blockage from green trees. It's 100% art with 5% reality.

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    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  6. Re:As a tinfoil hat-smith by rullywowr · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As an RF Field Support Engineer, I deal with this on a daily basis. The truth is that there is always some kind of noise floor, therefore if you could "see" RF energy it would be a lot different than light (visible) energy as there is ALWAYS some energy around and it would most likely obscure your "vision" of the spectrum. Completely. The question is where is the noise floor and where would you set your "squelch" to be? Also, where are the RF reflections off of solid objects? Where is the phase cancellation from competing waves?

    On a side note, we already have technology that can "see" RF...it's called a Spectrum Analyzer. Many are available in many forms. Or you could simply download one of the many Wi-Fi software tools available and visualize what is happening in those (Wi-Fi) regions of the RF spectrum right from your very own computer or tablet. I suppose if you wanted to get downright stupid you could tape a directional RF antenna on your head and pipe the output from your analyzer into a pair of LCD goggles. Woo-hoo.

    In other words, this article is downright shit and has zero credibility other than some asshat that was getting fruity on the ol' rainbow gaussian blur in Photoshop over some stock pictures.

  7. Re:As a tinfoil hat-smith by Stumbles · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Yes spectrum analyzers are used as you suggest but they show you a side view of a three dimensional wave.

    Still though I agree, this artist is nothing more than an asshat.

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    My karma is not a Chameleon.