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ForcePhone App Uses Ultrasonic Tone To Create Pressure-Sensitive Batphone (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Researchers at the University of Michigan have created an app that makes any smartphone pressure-sensitive without additional hardware. The app, called ForcePhone, uses ultrasonic tones in the existing microphone and speaker hardware that respond to pressure for additional functionality for touchscreens. The app emits a high-frequency ultrasound tone from the device's existing microphone, which is inaudible to humans but can be picked up by the phone. That tone is calibrated to change depending on the pressure that the user gives on the screen or on the body of the phone. This gives users an additional way to interact with their device through the app alone. The additional functionality provided by ForcePhone can be used in a number of ways. Squeezing the body of the phone could take a user back a page, for example; or increased pressure on the touchscreen could act as a 'right-click' function, showing additional information on the app in use. Kan Shin, Professor at the University of Michigan, said, "You don't need a special screen or built-in sensors to do this. Now this functionality can be realized on any phone." He added, "We've augmented the user interface without requiring any special built-in sensors. ForcePhone increases the vocabulary between the phone and the user."
How will dogs feel about this?
Space Cadet
If this functionality leads to an app which can detect being in a pocket, and defeat dialing when the phone is in a pocket, I'm all for it.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The mosquito* is a device designed to repel most people under 25 years of age using a 17.4 KHz tone. It seems reasonable to me therefore that 18 KHz would be audible to people too, but it probably doesn't matter here; the tone is probably pretty low amplitude. This means it'll be both quiet and at the very threshold of what most people can even perceive. Useless? Don't be such grump! Its a pretty cool idea, even though they haven't worked out all the features yet. *The Mosquito: www.movingsoundtech.com
The app emits a high-frequency ultrasound tone from the device's existing microphone
I checked, for once it is not an error in the summary, the error is in the actual article.
Anyway, it should be "speaker", the microphone is used to pick up the sound to detect any tone shifts that would indicate pressure on the phone. I highly doubt that this is not very dependent on the construction of the phone, but who am I to doubt "batphone" technology...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
In my day a Batphone was a big red phone that sat under a glass dish, and instead of a dial* it had single pushbutton. And when you pressed that button the Batphone on the other end started glowing and beeping in order to indicate an incoming call. That's a Batphone.
* A long time** ago telephones used to have rotary dials with all the digits 0 to 9 spaced around them with each digit associated with a finger sized hole. In order to make your phone call you would dial*** your number digit by digit. This involved placing your finger in the hole associated with the digit and rotating the complete dial clockwise until you reached the finger stop. At this point you would remove your finger and the dial would return to its original position. During the return phase the phone would issue a series of audible clicks, with the number clicks issued being calibrated to the digit that was dialed. These clicks were transmitted to the phone company and encoded the digit that was dialed.
** An even longer time ago telephones didn't even had dials. Instead they used voice activation (in a manner similar to Siri or Cortana or Echo, but implemented like Amazon's Mechanical Turk EG in a distributed manner) in order to complete your phone call. EG "Operator, connect me with ...."
*** Anachronism alert. Even though modern phones do not have rotary dials, us people with onions on our belts still "dial numbers"
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What about hearing damage? Inaudible is subjective. I can clearly hear 18kHz. I feel pain when near anti deer and anti cat devices that work similarly. Small children could have their hearing damaged and experience pain or anxiety from this. About time people agree to leave 16kHz to 25kHz frequencies alone. They are NOT inaudible to everyone.
Yo dawg, i herd u like fast sound, so I put more speed in ur sound so ur sound is faster than sound which is faster than sound which is faster than sound which is faster than sound which is faster th
stack size exceeded. Baling out near line 214137.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"This gives users an additional way to interact with their device through the app alone."
Translation:
"This gives advertisers an additional way to collect data on people that they'll never suspect."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...