I don't get the worry about it being hackable. Sure, you could engineer the whole thing with crypto in mind from top to bottom. With trustzone on the chip and safetynet on the phons but what's that gonna achieve? The test is not done in a controlled enviroment anyways. People looking to cheat the system could simply get their friends to do their "hackproof" tests.
There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
91–100 of 199 posts
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#92This is depressing. Single use disposable. Full of copper, gold, tungsten, halfnium. Will leach poison into the ground. Some of the most advanced technology of our age. Use it once, toss it in the trash. Meanwhile the paper versions work just fine.
In Europe a COVID19 quick test is 1-2 USD. This is 20-40 USD? For a device you only use once. Why is there any kind of market for this?
Quick self-test is 8€ here in Belgium. Are we being ripped off?
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#93I wonder why they didn’t use NFC. They could get away with a much simpler chip, or even a fully analog solution if they didn’t need the complexity of Bluetooth. Seems like you could just about accomplish the same thing with a pair of NFC tokens, a photodiode, and some transistors. Basic components. Connect one of the two NFC chips to the coil depending on how much light is reflected off the test strip. When you scann…
Or if they are already using Nordic chips, slightly more expensive nRF52832 can also do NFC.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Europe a COVID19 quick test is 1-2 USD. This is 20-40 USD? For a device you only use once. Why is there any kind of market for this?
Quick self-test is 8€ here in Belgium. Are we being ripped off?
Sounds like it.
Last I paid was 1.75 euro in DM (Germany). I remember buying them at 0.99 in LIDL.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#95This is depressing. Single use disposable. Full of copper, gold, tungsten, halfnium. Will leach poison into the ground. Some of the most advanced technology of our age. Use it once, toss it in the trash. Meanwhile the paper versions work just fine.
In Europe a COVID19 quick test is 1-2 USD. This is 20-40 USD? For a device you only use once. Why is there any kind of market for this?
same reason there is a market for similar "high tech" pregnancy tests: people will pay more for something they feel is higher value, and price itself is an indicator of higher value.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Europe a COVID19 quick test is 1-2 USD. This is 20-40 USD? For a device you only use once. Why is there any kind of market for this?
Quick self-test is 8€ here in Belgium. Are we being ripped off?
A little googling around European online pharmacies says yes.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#97I worked at a company that was using these chips to control doors. They're extremely cheap chips, but writing code for them is not pleasant. Documentation is lacking and the tools people use to write code for it suck. Props to the devs who helped put this together.
Any chance I can reuse one of these boards given that I have a few of these test kits? Or are the tools so bad that it's not worth it?
An nRF52 dev kit is like $30. It’s probably not worth the time and aggravation to try to repurpose one of these COVID tests unless you’re really determined. Nordic is one of the better vendors - their tools and docs aren’t too bad.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#98US paid $230M to have this device built.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/02/01/us-231m-deal-ellume-at...
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#99This is depressing. Single use disposable. Full of copper, gold, tungsten, halfnium. Will leach poison into the ground. Some of the most advanced technology of our age. Use it once, toss it in the trash. Meanwhile the paper versions work just fine.
> Will leach poison into the ground. Electronics must not be disposed with general waste, I'd imagine all Western municipalities have special recycling programs for electrical devices. Not sure if they'd be that happy to receive used covid test kits though.
They do, except many don't use them as much and is quite common to find electronics on the containers.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#100This is depressing. Single use disposable. Full of copper, gold, tungsten, halfnium. Will leach poison into the ground. Some of the most advanced technology of our age. Use it once, toss it in the trash. Meanwhile the paper versions work just fine.
In Europe a COVID19 quick test is 1-2 USD. This is 20-40 USD? For a device you only use once. Why is there any kind of market for this?
Is it because it is covered by health insurance? Might as well get the expensive one if I get it reimbursed ...