Polymers Brighten Hopes For Visible Light Communication

ckwu writes Today nearly all computers, tablets, and smartphones have Wi-Fi capabilities, receiving and transmitting data over a range of radio frequencies. But a burgeoning technology known as visible light communication could someday carry those data in the same light that illuminates a room. Now a tag team of semiconducting organic polymers is bringing that dream one step closer. When excited with a blue LED, the polymer pair helps to create white light that can be rapidly switched on and off to encode information. A proof-of-principle device using the polymers sent data at 350 Mbps over a distance of 5 cm with minimal errors, a rate 35 times faster than a commercially available phosphor used for blue-light color conversion.

Comments

Heck, I'll settle for white light

[davidwr]

Give me a light bulb with the luminosity and color spectrum of a traditional "soft white" light bulb, the power consumption of a "100W incandescent-bulb-equivalent" LED, and an acceptably-low cost and I'll start replacing all the bulbs in my abode tomorrow.

Bonus points if the bulbs do NOT offer any communications ability or any other I/O other than the electrical on/off switch - that way I know they aren't going to be hacked or used against me.

Re:Heck, I'll settle for white light

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you won't, because what you want is available, minus the unrealistic requirements that you have only to justify why you won't switch.