PIC microcontrollers and a Realtek 8019 or Crystal Semi one chip nic are the current favorites of many. We have been able to achieve 3MB/sec quite easily.
Microchip has code that you can use too.
I recommend PIC18's if you are going to do this though, since the 16's are a little too limited at times. We have used both though.
COLOR KINETICS AND AMBIENT DEVICES PARTNER TO BLEND SMART ILLUMINATION WITH WIRELESS INFORMATION
Color Kinetics licenses patented Chromacore® technology to wireless information innovator for new category of color-driven, ambient information devices
Boston and Cambridge, MA - March 18, 2003 - Color Kinetics Incorporated, the pioneer of intelligent LED-based illumination technologies, and Ambient Devices, the leader in glanceable information displays, today announced an agreement designed to address demand for an emerging wave of wireless ambient devices. Through a technology licensing agreement, Ambient will leverage Color Kinetics' patented Chromacore® technology to provide the color-changing "intelligence" that illuminates its innovative Ambient Orb and enables a broad range of future applications.
"We're pleased to add Ambient Devices to the growing number of companies that are differentiating their products by licensing Color Kinetics' technology. Ambient Devices has created an entirely new way of delivering timely, wireless information with massive consumer and business appeal, and we're excited to play a role in this new and forward-looking market," said Bill Sims, president and COO, Color Kinetics. "The use of intelligently controlled LED illumination for the transmission of wireless information demonstrates the truly remarkable breadth of applications that can be achieved using Chromacore."
"We're thrilled to collaborate with Color Kinetics and explore the potential for real-time information visualization," said David Rose, president, Ambient Devices. "Ambient Devices is committed to the concept of 'calm technology', which takes advantage of a person's powerful perceptual system. We have an innate ability to read subtle changes in the surrounding environment and this can be a means to render information without cognitive clutter. Incorporating Color Kinetics' Chromacore technology allows us to do this in a simple and aesthetically elegant way through non-intrusive color-changing light."
In response to the increasingly pervasive flood of information that interrupts consumers via pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants and the like, Ambient Devices weaves information into everyday objects that employ color-changing light to unobtrusively deliver Internet-based information at a glance. The Ambient Orb, a wireless, glass desktop device, is the first in Ambient Devices' growing line of products to take advantage of Color Kinetics' Chromacore - a pioneering technology that applies microprocessor-controlled, multicolored, high-brightness LEDs to generate millions of colors and color-changing effects. The Ambient Orb is powered by the Ambient Information Network, a nationwide wireless network which transmits user-specified information and seamlessly maps that data to color changes, reflecting fluctuations in everything from the stock market to traffic patterns to pollen counts and weather conditions. Chromacore supplies the color-changing effects that are the Orb's means of communication to users - for example, displaying a linear spectrum from green when a user's stock portfolio is up to red when it's down. It also provides the inherent benefits of LED-based illumination, including long source life, low energy consumption, and little heat emission.
Ambient Devices is working with companies across numerous markets to embed wireless connectivity in a wide range of products, including gauges and indicators for financial services, office furniture, health and wellness, and business accessories. The compact, flexible nature of Chromacore allows for easy configuration within products as small as keychain fobs and pens. As a result, businesses can differentiate their products by transforming them into unique, ambient information delivery services.
The Ambient Orb will be available nationwide in May 2003.
About Ambient Ambient Devices provides the hardware, infrastructure and services that support a new range of glanceable wireless devices.
Is that they are always too expensive for the devices which could really be useful if connected, and too slow for real networking.
The nework fridge, lamps, other devices have a $5 ceiling on parts cost, and any reasonable Powerline network system generally costs a lot more than that. The OFDM based system mentioned is probably in the cable modem price range.
Doesn't mention the chipset in the release. Does anyone know if there (finally) is a consensus standard on this???
Tivo doesn't make the patent rules, you (the voter) do. Unfortunately (for them) they still need to play by those rules, which don't favor small companies enough in most cases.
Far from raking in the dough, Tivo is keeping prices low, while losing money. (For the 3 months ended 10/31/2001, revenues were 5,342; after tax earnings were -33,838.)
You would be hard pressed to find a cheaper way of creating a tivo like system, of comparable performance, from commercially available parts. Jumpy video in the window of a crashing pc isn't the same.
Tivo is licensing, so development can and will continue!
The Tivo service has been very unobtrusive to me so far. I'd gladly watch 1 targeted commercial at my convenience a month to help them out.
I've always thought that the "Everything you ever wanted to know about product X channel" would be a great idea. It would be nice to be able to get a real professional sales video about all of the features of that new car that you might want to buy ON DEMAND. Tivo just figured out how to use the DEAD AIR in the middle of the night to make the cost of such a channel acceptable.
I want to be able to select something like:
Product Videos -> Cars -> BMW -> 325 -> (BMW, Car & Driver, Road & Track) and watch 3 videos on the new 325 series at my convenience. I win, BMW wins, and Tivo wins. What's the problem?
Same thing with vacation destinations, digital cameras, etc. Anything where a static page of info just isn't enough.
Ternary Computing and the rw measure
on
Ternary Computing
·
· Score: 1
This topic seems to come up all the time in math discussions, and usually ignores a simple reason why 3 is much worse than 2.
The obvious simplification which we all have made from base 2 is that 2 symbols really require the detection of only ONE symbol's presence or absence. i.e. you don't have to confirm that a digit is "1" if you can confirm that it's NOT "0". The the number of recognized symbols in a number system is ONE LESS than the number of actual symbols in the number system.
Using this type of metric, one can infer that the "r*w" cost really should be "(r-1)*w" which when compard for the case of 2 and 3 clearly shows that 3 is highly inferior as a number base to 2.
Thus this article's 1 million code example simplifies to:
Binary (20 bits, r=2) --> (r-1)*w = 20
Ternary (13 tits, r=3) --> (r-1)*w = 26
Decimal (6 digits, r=10) --> (r-1)*w = 54
My company had wireless T1 for phone and another T1 for internet through a provider here in boston. It was not pretty. I'm not sure what the real problems were, but:
We had frequent outages.
We had problems during bad weather, but becuase of the frequent outages we couldn't be sure if the two were related.
We ended up with 2 optical T1's.
Hopefully its all been figured out, but given my experience with sprint's cell phone service, I wouldn't be using wireless IP for anything important.
PS: The reason sprint phones run the battery down on standby so fast is that the coverage sucks, so they program the phones to transmit constantly looking for new cells!
video based debug.....
on
Silicon LED
·
· Score: 1
It might be interesting to put indicators on your chip based on these devices to show state during chip test. You could then view that with a camera to determine the state of lots of nodes at the same time. Of course I doubt it would be cheaper than boundary scan, but I suspect that there would be some useful applications. As it is, I doubt it would be useful for much more than fibercomm chips.
Slashdot Mirror
PIC microcontrollers and a Realtek 8019 or Crystal Semi one chip nic are the current favorites of many. We have been able to achieve 3MB/sec quite easily.
Microchip has code that you can use too.
I recommend PIC18's if you are going to do this though, since the 16's are a little too limited at times. We have used both though.
COLOR KINETICS AND AMBIENT DEVICES PARTNER TO BLEND SMART ILLUMINATION WITH WIRELESS
INFORMATION
Color Kinetics licenses patented Chromacore® technology to wireless information innovator for new category of color-driven, ambient information devices
Boston and Cambridge, MA - March 18, 2003 - Color Kinetics Incorporated, the pioneer of intelligent LED-based illumination technologies, and Ambient Devices, the leader in glanceable information displays, today announced an agreement designed to address demand for an emerging wave of wireless ambient devices. Through a technology licensing agreement, Ambient will leverage Color Kinetics' patented Chromacore® technology to provide the color-changing "intelligence" that illuminates its innovative Ambient Orb and enables a broad range of future applications.
"We're pleased to add Ambient Devices to the growing number of companies that are differentiating their products by licensing Color Kinetics' technology. Ambient Devices has created an entirely new way of delivering timely, wireless information with massive consumer and business appeal, and we're excited to play a role in this new and forward-looking market," said Bill Sims, president and COO, Color Kinetics. "The use of intelligently controlled LED illumination for the transmission of wireless information demonstrates the truly remarkable breadth of applications that can be achieved using Chromacore."
"We're thrilled to collaborate with Color Kinetics and explore the potential for real-time information visualization," said David Rose, president, Ambient Devices. "Ambient Devices is committed to the concept of 'calm technology', which takes advantage of a person's powerful perceptual system. We have an innate ability to read subtle changes in the surrounding environment and this can be a means to render information without cognitive clutter. Incorporating Color Kinetics' Chromacore technology allows us to do this in a simple and aesthetically elegant way through non-intrusive color-changing light."
In response to the increasingly pervasive flood of information that interrupts consumers via pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants and the like, Ambient Devices weaves information into everyday objects that employ color-changing light to unobtrusively deliver Internet-based information at a glance. The Ambient Orb, a wireless, glass desktop device, is the first in Ambient Devices' growing line of products to take advantage of Color Kinetics' Chromacore - a pioneering technology that applies microprocessor-controlled, multicolored, high-brightness LEDs to generate millions of colors and color-changing effects. The Ambient Orb is powered by the Ambient Information Network, a nationwide wireless network which transmits user-specified information and seamlessly maps that data to color changes, reflecting fluctuations in everything from the stock market to traffic patterns to pollen counts and weather conditions. Chromacore supplies the color-changing effects that are the Orb's means of communication to users - for example, displaying a linear spectrum from green when a user's stock portfolio is up to red when it's down. It also provides the inherent benefits of LED-based illumination, including long source life, low energy consumption, and little heat emission.
Ambient Devices is working with companies across numerous markets to embed wireless connectivity in a wide range of products, including gauges and indicators for financial services, office furniture, health and wellness, and business accessories. The compact, flexible nature of Chromacore allows for easy configuration within products as small as keychain fobs and pens. As a result, businesses can differentiate their products by transforming them into unique, ambient information delivery services.
The Ambient Orb will be available nationwide in May 2003.
About Ambient
Ambient Devices provides the hardware, infrastructure and services that support a new range of glanceable wireless devices.
Move into the left lane to get there faster? add $5 to your bill.
Want everybody ahead of you to let you by? $500 should do it.
Want to go the wrong way down a one way street? How about $10 per block.
Need to change that traffic light NOW? How about $5 and its green in 10 seconds or less?
The possibilities are endless....
Is that they are always too expensive for the devices which could really be useful if connected, and too slow for real networking.
The nework fridge, lamps, other devices have a $5 ceiling on parts cost, and any reasonable Powerline network system generally costs a lot more than that. The OFDM based system mentioned is probably in the cable modem price range.
Doesn't mention the chipset in the release. Does anyone know if there (finally) is a consensus standard on this???
Tivo doesn't make the patent rules, you (the voter) do. Unfortunately (for them) they still need to play by those rules, which don't favor small companies enough in most cases.
Far from raking in the dough, Tivo is keeping prices low, while losing money. (For the 3 months ended 10/31/2001, revenues were 5,342; after tax earnings were -33,838.)
You would be hard pressed to find a cheaper way of creating a tivo like system, of comparable performance, from commercially available parts. Jumpy video in the window of a crashing pc isn't the same.
Tivo is licensing, so development can and will continue!
The Tivo service has been very unobtrusive to me so far. I'd gladly watch 1 targeted commercial at my convenience a month to help them out.
I've always thought that the "Everything you ever wanted to know about product X channel" would be a great idea. It would be nice to be able to get a real professional sales video about all of the features of that new car that you might want to buy ON DEMAND. Tivo just figured out how to use the DEAD AIR in the middle of the night to make the cost of such a channel acceptable.
I want to be able to select something like:
Product Videos -> Cars -> BMW -> 325 -> (BMW, Car & Driver, Road & Track) and watch 3 videos on the new 325 series at my convenience. I win, BMW wins, and Tivo wins. What's the problem?
Same thing with vacation destinations, digital cameras, etc. Anything where a static page of info just isn't enough.
This topic seems to come up all the time in math discussions, and usually ignores a simple reason why 3 is much worse than 2.
The obvious simplification which we all have made from base 2 is that 2 symbols really require the detection of only ONE symbol's presence or absence. i.e. you don't have to confirm that a digit is "1" if you can confirm that it's NOT "0". The the number of recognized symbols in a number system is ONE LESS than the number of actual symbols in the number system.
Using this type of metric, one can infer that the "r*w" cost really should be "(r-1)*w" which when compard for the case of 2 and 3 clearly shows that 3 is highly inferior as a number base to 2.
Thus this article's 1 million code example simplifies to:
Binary (20 bits, r=2) --> (r-1)*w = 20
Ternary (13 tits, r=3) --> (r-1)*w = 26
Decimal (6 digits, r=10) --> (r-1)*w = 54
Comments?
We had frequent outages.
We had problems during bad weather, but becuase of the frequent outages we couldn't be sure if the two were related.
We ended up with 2 optical T1's.
Hopefully its all been figured out, but given my experience with sprint's cell phone service, I wouldn't be using wireless IP for anything important.
PS: The reason sprint phones run the battery down on standby so fast is that the coverage sucks, so they program the phones to transmit constantly looking for new cells!
It might be interesting to put indicators on your chip based on these devices to show state during chip test. You could then view that with a camera to determine the state of lots of nodes at the same time. Of course I doubt it would be cheaper than boundary scan, but I suspect that there would be some useful applications. As it is, I doubt it would be useful for much more than fibercomm chips.