Wireless Internet by Flicking Lights On and Off

[gaborbarla]

Smoke signal FTW!

 

[hardcore_gamer]

its nothing new.."free space optics"

 

[cookoy]

you can't have more than 1 transmitter within a common space

 

[Guest]

100watt flourescent sounds a little far fetched. Are you sure it is not a 100 watt incandescent? Leds are commercialy up to around 120lumens/w and most flourescent bulbs are around 70 lumens/w.

 

[jj463rd]

[citation][nom]hardcore_gamer[/nom]its nothing new.."free space optics"[/citation]
I agree.Lightwave voice communications were first used in the year 1880 by Alexander Graham Bell in his photophone

 

[eddieroolz]

Sounds like and interesting technology.

 

[hemelskonijn]

For all those above that are afraid standing between the lights will completely block the signal please note that light can scattered around a room in just about any direction unless it is absorbed (hits a black surface) this means that any where in the room where there is at least some illumination from the modem you can have a data connection the receiving end could look a bit like the playstation move controller so it can emit light to any direction and it would be hard to place a magazine on top of a network adapter shaped like that sticking out of the top of your monitor. The signal strength is indeed directly tied to the amount of light that falls on the receiver but that should be no problem specially not if you use multiple sources (IE: replace all the current lightning with these special lamps).

The article doesn't mention if the 3Mbs are the combined maximum data rates for all clients or on a per client base and as far as i can tell most office productivity can be done with a lot less then 3Mbit symmetric lines (lots of offices still use dial up for off site access and very few files that are big enough to obstruct a network like this).

 

[Guest]

It's a good technology for bad wheather, longggg distances and SOS cases. Implemented in vital domains, as a backup, could be a solution. It should be able to outstand wi-fi in very few, but critical situations.

I think we will be hearing more and more in the forthcoming years.

 

[house70]

Cool. I want that.

 

[wildwell]

Why? We're all discussing the potential cons against this ambient optical network, but why did the city of St. Cloud decide to install this kind of system? What are the pros?

 

[Guest]

Something I don't get here: You have to run cable to this thing in the ceiling, why not just run it to the computer?