Chinese Professor Builds Li-Fi System With Retail Parts

alphadogg writes "The equipment is big and expensive, with the research costs at almost $500,000. But by just using retail components, Chinese professor Chi Nan has built her own Li-Fi wireless system that can use LED lights to send and receive Internet data. "I bought the lights from Taobao," she said, referring to the Chinese e-commerce site. The professor from Fudan University showed off the technology on Tuesday at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi routers that use radio signals, Chi's system relies on light to send and receive data wirelessly. Others scientists, especially in the U.K., have also been researching the technology, and dubbed it "Li-Fi". But rather than develop specialized hardware, Chi bought off-the-shelf retail parts to create her system."

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IrDA

[Dan East]

News just in: IrDA wants its acronym back. On a more serious note, I really did like IrDA. It was slow as crap and the range sucked, but at one point in time, pretty much EVERYTHING had IrDA support. Laptops, cell phones, PDAs, HPCs, etc. You could buy serial dongles to add to any PC for $5 or so. It was the go-to fallback to transfer a file or data between two devices that had disparate storage card types (PC-Card vs CF cards, etc), or you didn't have cables to connect them up directly. Bluetooth has sort of replaced it, but you can't just bit-bang communication with a bluetooth device using a microcontroller and two 25 cent components. Plus Bluetooth has been implemented by OEMs as more of a method to connect dumb peripherals than a method of communicating directly between devices.