I've just read the paper; it's academically very cool yet practically useless (at least for now).
It uses 24GHz for RX, 60GHz for TX so retransmission is just a fantasy of the "journalist". It requires +45dBm output power (32watts!) at the Basestation to power it at 50cm range, so less practical than regular RFID for now really (and absolutely no chance of ever working as a mesh).
Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never seen emergence "used as an explanation in its own right." I also don't understand why you would feel foolish after reading this.
Actually, most of the uses of the word "emergent" I encounter are exactly as the LW article describes. If you'd replace the word "emergent" with "magic", you'd learn nothing more and nothing less from a sentence. [0] As for feeling foolish after playing with evolutionary algorithms - I'm not the OP but I can relate somewhat given how I saw people learning evolutionary algorithms and neural networks at my university (…
Who is saying that the analogously named models are equivalent the analogs themselves? Analogous terminology and metaphors exist so that people can ease themselves into a deeper understanding of a subject. I agree that some people can incorrectly draw grand conclusions from a simple name, but that doesn't mean the people who use these "things" with these "names" only understand their mechanisms on a superficial level. Seriously, good luck explaining any model without introducing an analog that we, as humans, can relate with.
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#33I've just read the paper; it's academically very cool yet practically useless (at least for now). It uses 24GHz for RX, 60GHz for TX so retransmission is just a fantasy of the "journalist". It requires +45dBm output power (32watts!) at the Basestation to power it at 50cm range, so less practical than regular RFID for now really (and absolutely no chance of ever working as a mesh).
45 dBm is crazy! Do you know the FCC limitations for that frequency? For the ISM bands its +36 dBm EIRP maximum. I'm not familiar with the rules for the higher GHz frequencies.
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, most of the uses of the word "emergent" I encounter are exactly as the LW article describes. If you'd replace the word "emergent" with "magic", you'd learn nothing more and nothing less from a sentence. [0] As for feeling foolish after playing with evolutionary algorithms - I'm not the OP but I can relate somewhat given how I saw people learning evolutionary algorithms and neural networks at my university (…
Who is saying that the analogously named models are equivalent the analogs themselves? Analogous terminology and metaphors exist so that people can ease themselves into a deeper understanding of a subject. I agree that some people can incorrectly draw grand conclusions from a simple name, but that doesn't mean the people who use these "things" with these "names" only understand their mechanisms on a superficial level…
Sure, I'm not saying analogies are the problem. They're not, we need them, they're important parts of our cognition.
My point was twofold: a/ beware inference from surface analogies, always strive to understand where the border between similar and different properties lie, and b/ it does happen. People do draw conclusions and build their understanding on superficial analogies in a systematic way. That's why I mentioned the anecdote of CS students I know. I've seen it in real life. Also known as cargo-culting, it's unfortunately not a rare phenomenon.
Also, I'm not the CDDDDARP ((cddddar this-comment)-poster), but I hazard a guess that he "felt sort of foolish" because he discovered he accidentally did some inferring from surface analogies and ended up disappointed.
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is saying that the analogously named models are equivalent the analogs themselves? Analogous terminology and metaphors exist so that people can ease themselves into a deeper understanding of a subject. I agree that some people can incorrectly draw grand conclusions from a simple name, but that doesn't mean the people who use these "things" with these "names" only understand their mechanisms on a superficial level…
Sure, I'm not saying analogies are the problem. They're not, we need them, they're important parts of our cognition. My point was twofold: a/ beware inference from surface analogies, always strive to understand where the border between similar and different properties lie, and b/ it does happen. People do draw conclusions and build their understanding on superficial analogies in a systematic way . That's why I mentio…
Exactly that. I inferred from surface analogies and was disappointed.
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#36It 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.
I agree about scavenging. It is inefficient and doesn't make much sense.. They're likely rebroadcasting but at a much much lower power level so the next hop is much closer than the first.
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The power scavenging circuit looks to not be the same frequency as the communications radio circuit due to antenna size differences. Likely it's harvesting power from 2.4 GHz or similar frequency and then using the higher (24 GHz-ish) band for comms. With a decent meshing protocol this would be quite interesting, although latency with many many short hops will be horrid.
The antenna is way too small for 2.4GHz. It makes sense for higher frequency (60GHz or whatever he said in the video). You can power harvest RF waves straight up but what you absorb gives you very little to rebroadcast again.
There are others doing work on this for sensors you could embed into say a wall to give you the pressure reading of the concrete (a simple piezo say) but those usually modulate an RF wave (similar to NFC) instead of rebroadcasting.
Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The power scavenging circuit looks to not be the same frequency as the communications radio circuit due to antenna size differences. Likely it's harvesting power from 2.4 GHz or similar frequency and then using the higher (24 GHz-ish) band for comms. With a decent meshing protocol this would be quite interesting, although latency with many many short hops will be horrid.
The antenna is way too small for 2.4GHz. It makes sense for higher frequency (60GHz or whatever he said in the video). You can power harvest RF waves straight up but what you absorb gives you very little to rebroadcast again.
There are others doing work on this for sensors you could embed into say a wall to give you the pressure reading of the concrete (a simple piezo say) but those usually modulate an RF wave (similar to NFC) instead of rebroadcasting.