11–20 of 38 posts
1 - It works at about 60GHz. You are not getting a lot of distance or even going through a wall at that frequency and (likely) very low power levels
2 - The devices still need a central "base station". Presumably they rebroadcast to neighbouring nodes; but at lower power levels since they reuse some of the received power for themselves. I doubt you'd get more than 2 - 3 hops out before you don't have much power to begin with.
3 - He cites including these in fridges, coffee makers, light bulbs, etc. None of these are power constrained applications. You can put in $0.45 802.15.4 chip in them TODAY and it comes with a whole microcontroller inside to do what you want to do.
The tech here is no doubt "cool" but I don't see any applicability for IoT. If anything I think it would have some medical uses in pills you can swallow etc. But IoT use is kind of a dud.
Most IoTs have pretty good power source and you can run the w/ existing chipsets.
It is a very cool development but I see couple of issues with it: 1 - It works at about 60GHz. You are not getting a lot of distance or even going through a wall at that frequency and (likely) very low power levels 2 - The devices still need a central "base station". Presumably they rebroadcast to neighbouring nodes; but at lower power levels since they reuse some of the received power for themselves. I doubt you'd g…
Unless you have a directional antenna, which these don't, you can not possibly scavenge power and simultaneously hope to increase the range by rebroadcasting.
So rebroadcasting is pointless, these simply communicate with the base station.
But what do they do? I mean it's nice to communicate, but you have to have something to say.
These seem like the beginnings of the localizers in Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, or maybe his earlier Fast Times at Fairmont High.
In the story those nodes were compute, storage, and transport. As well as interface.
Amazing tech.
I would be interested in trading for a sample, or better yet, the specs of the industrial base necessary to manufacture them.
A light bulb I can control is nice, but one that anyone can control doesn't seem very useful. How does one implement security on top, since this is passive?
That said, I don't see why would it need to be passive if it's in a light bulb, or any other device that can be actuated. It'll need more energy to do whatever you tell it to, so it can also use that energy to actively power the CPU.
It is a very cool development but I see couple of issues with it: 1 - It works at about 60GHz. You are not getting a lot of distance or even going through a wall at that frequency and (likely) very low power levels 2 - The devices still need a central "base station". Presumably they rebroadcast to neighbouring nodes; but at lower power levels since they reuse some of the received power for themselves. I doubt you'd g…
Sounds like 24 GHz. But all your critiques are still very valid.
But if you can blanket the world with these kinds of radios and mesh them, think 10s or 100s of trillions of radios, then the range issues are less of a concern but you have a chicken and egg problem which needs many many billions of dollars of investment to kickstart. Great reason for IPv6, though :)
It is a very cool development but I see couple of issues with it: 1 - It works at about 60GHz. You are not getting a lot of distance or even going through a wall at that frequency and (likely) very low power levels 2 - The devices still need a central "base station". Presumably they rebroadcast to neighbouring nodes; but at lower power levels since they reuse some of the received power for themselves. I doubt you'd g…
> Presumably they rebroadcast to neighbouring nodes; Unless you have a directional antenna, which these don't, you can not possibly scavenge power and simultaneously hope to increase the range by rebroadcasting. So rebroadcasting is pointless, these simply communicate with the base station. But what do they do? I mean it's nice to communicate, but you have to have something to say.