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Philips Ethernet-Powered Lighting Transmits Data To Mobile Devices Via Light
llebeel writes Philips has shown off its Ethernet-powered connected lighting, which can transmit data to mobile devices through light via embedded code. Arriving in the form of LED "luminaires," Philips' connected office lighting will aim to not only save businesses money on energy costs, but also serve as a means of providing information and data about the general running of a building, transmitted through light, to improve the overall efficiency of business infrastructure. Philips' Onno Willemse said, "Over the light, we can project a code — its number, its IP address, its MAC address — making each fixture unique and recognizable. We can also receive that light on our mobile phones, so if you hold the lens of a mobile device under the luminaire, it actually reads the code and makes a connection to it over WiFi."
This is surely the rise of the machines! THEY'RE IN THE LIGHTS!!! D:
1990 called. It wants its IR LAN back.
...if you're a lighting manufacturer wanting to lock customers into your products. What, pray tell, is the *real*-world advantage for the customers, though? Because I'm struggling to see anything this provides which couldn't be done better using a different technique.
Yet another Slashvertisement for a pointless invention.
Peppered with PWM to give you a headache? Well, the frequency is probably so high that it won't be an issue, but I still prefer my room lighting LEDs with pure DC.
30 years ago we proved you could video-capture 9600-baud modem lamp pulses to transfer/sniff data using light. This is just a variation on that practice.
So imagine the use case: you enter the office, you throw your phone on the table, it locks in with the light [and] it knows exactly which room you are in and then lets you control the room," Willemse explained. "Then you go to another room, you put your phone there it synchronises through and then you can control the meeting room, too, for example, so the indoor location is anonymously organised as it recognises your device."
It's just to control the lights and whatnot?
I thought this was a substitute to Wi-Fi. You know, the packets come over blinking LED lights.
Then again, that may lead to eye strain and seizures.
And cue the people who will complain about their perceived harm from rapid flickering lights.
"802.11e" - "e" for epilepsy.
if every lightbulb is going to have an IP address — they better be using IPv6.. ;-]
2cents
j
It would have been interesting to see the light itself powered using PoE and have it forward the LAN traffic optically. Presumably the LED itself can cycle on and off and be a receiver during the off period, or be coupled with a separate optical receiver for the return path. I see that now IT security needs to be more involved with the lighting management !
Nullius in verba
I'm not that excited about the IP information being sent by the lights. Kind of cool, but I think it's an application waiting for a use. Using Power over Ethernet for the lights themselves is pretty damn cool. Easier to set up lights (you only need a CAT5 cable, instead of electircal cabling, etc), and, assuming your switch has a good enough UPS on it, you can have lighting that will stay up during a power outage.
Lights should illuminate things. Refrigerators should refrigerate things. Stoves should heat things, air conditioners should cool your air to a certain temperature, and coffee makers should make you coffee. They don't really need to do anything else. They don't all need Twitter accounts. I don't want my workplaces' lights to talk to my cell phone and tell some server somewhere where I was and what I was doing. That is a.) creepy and b.) almost certainly pointless.
God, we live in a society where we can't even provide a sensible standard of living for the majority of our population, our education system is stuffed, our banking system is stuffed, here in the UK (and NZ where I'm from) we seem unable to build houses anymore unless they are overpriced shoeboxes, but hey we can put ten different sensors in a lightbulb!
I became an engineer because we used to do stuff that improved the lot of humanity.
What happened?
Now I have to worry about buying cheap LED lightbulbs from China trying to root my devices.
Call me when the token ring version is ready.
The potential for mischief in a needlessly networked set-up is endless. Make lights strobe when someone enters the room or all the time. Reverse motion detection so lights go out whenever someone enters the room. Make lights flash out in morse code "Help! I'm being held hostage in a lighting fixture factory!".
Lol I did this via QRCode videos, a bit outdated this thought, but it does remind me of the torches from the Lord of the Rings movie :)
http://slashdot.org/firehose.p...
French Mirror:
http://www.clubic.com/insolite...
Russian Mirror:
http://www.imena.ua/blog/datai...
They wouldn't be able to buy enough IPV4 addresses anymore.
Another quote, one that wants a fix:
Philips' Onno Willemse said, "Over the light, we can project a code — its number, its IP address, its MAC address
"Philips' Onno Willemse said, "Over the light, we can receive a code — its number, its IP address, its MAC address"
Fixed that for 'ya.
Wasting power to run LEDs in a goofy way, negating some of the benefit of using LEDs. (vs florescent which they only just caught up with and still have a greater total cost last time I looked into it.) The electronics pulling power from ethernet also come with losses... thing is an office building is going to multiply it much more than a household.
CAT5 isn't the way to run low Volt power distances. Using your typical 14G wire is going to lose power over 12V as well, but not as much. Yes, I realize the total losses per year amount a few bucks for a whole house lighting system that is on 24/7 but since I never did the math vs those incredibly tiny ethernet wires I can't say how much you are losing... other than I remember the resistance loss involved dividing by the cross sectional area, so the larger the area the smaller the losses. 22G is a really tiny wire vs 14G or 12G. When I figured it, the 12G wasn't worth the extra money, so maybe almost 10G in difference doesn't amount to much... One can get 2 wire 14G pretty cheaply (I fail to see why code would require 3 wire for this) and I wouldn't run cat5 at this point...
For new wiring, probably it is best to aim for the max DC of 48V and wire up the LEDS to run at 48V so then you can use thinner copper. All this being said, peak copper is about 7 years away so the goal is going to be using less copper... power losses are not going to be significant compared to construction cost... I'd still just run cheap small gauge wire than ethernet which needs special parts to extract the power; despite it being nice using the network cable... cat 6-7 type uses are likely not going to like all the noise these devices introduce anyway.
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Stick to what you know I suppose. Maybe next we will see Bose illustrate how data can be transferred by sound waves...
Sure, PoE can transmit 36 W (if all eight connectors are used), but lighting a whole office that way? That's one incredibly efficient luminaire!
This idea was being bounced around back in the 80's. Wouldn't be surprised if someone with a good collection of Byte Magazine from back then could find mention of it.
- Honey, can't you turn the strobing 100W lights down while we watch this romantic movie?
- No-can-do, that would kill the Netflix stream
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Hemisphere-wide communication by strobing The Sun!! Mwahahahahaha...
Of course, the latency sucks (9 min both ways) but I'm working on it.
'Scuse me, I'm off to Kickstarter...
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I just assumed the post was correct about 12V-- 48V makes far more sense especially given US code limits DC to 48V (or 50V I forget; either way I still think it is as lousy as their solar panel V caps... 6V will kill you under the proper conditions.) otherwise, the standard might have gone higher.
Good idea about 220V but US stuff is 120V; I suppose one could wire up the house and use cheap plug adapters all over the place. We can do 240V, which I do have wired in a few places but that takes another wire! It's not like EU 220V.
Way too entrenched to ever change; best we can hope for are new DC standards and solar electrical regulation changes. Maybe after 50 years when most everything is running DC they can start to shift the grid to modern high voltage DC grid. That is assuming the USA isn't too far into 3rd world status by that time.
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You would only see this as pointless if you considered a light to be a light. In many cases, especially commercial installations they are so much more. Intelligent office lighting that is activated by a central authority, PE cell, or motion detection all the same time like in many commercial buildings are a real outright pain in the arse to configure. If there were some simple way to communicate with and configure one single light it would be a godsend.
One of the industrial control system vendors we deal with solved the same problem (clusterfuck of control units being outright impossible to manage centrally) using a similar method, IR communication. Each controller has an IR port. Now if one is dead or needs a firmware update you don't need to scroll through a massive hierarchy and pray that you actually connect to the right controller first go, you just go up and hold your device up to the IR port and it gives you all of it's details so you can be 100% sure you're talking to the right one.
In the computer world I don't think this is very different from the little blinking light on the front of rack mounted servers that helps locate the one you're logged into.
no?
Nuf said, de dah di di