Wireless Firewire

[Lanbrown]

Seriously though. A few years back I read on news.com of a tech that allows electricity to flow through surface contact. So say your entire desktop is one big recharger. You wouldn't need wires. The kicker? Touching the surface won't electrocute you. Something with the materials used. I think it?s the same principle used for those Sonic care toothbrushes. Couple that with wireless Firewire and you get some very cool options. Drop your PDA, iPod, camera, external hard drive on your desk and they all start charging and all automatically link to your puter via wireless Firewire. Coolness. 😎

Actually the principle is different. The mat that you are talking about has a lot of contacts that provide DC power and they are turned on and off depending on if there is a device touching it. The reason why you can't be electrocuted or even feel it is that the amps and voltage are both too low. You can go and grab the positive and negative of a 12 volt car battery and it will do nothing. Why? There isn't enough voltage to overcome the resistance in your body, so you feel nothing. Ever dealt with a bad PS plugged into a outlet? You feel it and that's about it, it won't kill you. 220 is going to hurt though. Add water into the mix and now it's lethal. If you spill something on the mat, those contacts will not have any power going to them.

The sonic care toothbrushes use a differnt sceheme. There are no contacts like the mat.

 

[Lanbrown]

all we really need is a wireless (secure) super high quality video transmission equal or close to dvi, so we could have a wireless monitor.

If it's wireless it will never be totally secure.

 

[JoE950]

If it's wireless it will never be totally secure.

yeah its a bad idea if your doing dumb stuff and making yourself a target. but if your just doing normal things and not hosting a kiddy porn ring, you should be fine.

is it ok to say kiddy porn here?

 

[ingenious]

Am I missing something here? What's the point of doing firewire over a wireless network if the network maxes out at 11 Mbps??? What's this 802.15.3 standard about? Don't products like digital cameras (high-end) and TiVos already do wireless transmission of data via 802.11g?

This fi-wi-fi-seems impractical until the wireless network standard changes...

its a completely diff standard. it wouldnt transport over airport (802.11b) or airport extreme (802.11g). It would transport over its own wireless network, at speeds higher than fw.

 

[JoE950]

Federal Agents are on their way to your home as we speak... thanks to the Freedom of Information Act... or something related to Homeland Security

haha, anyways just adding some encryption (like with airport) will make it possible for vendors to say its "secure" and thats all the consumer needs to hear until we all die of cancer. if you have stuff that really needs to be hush hush, then you really shouldnt be on any kind of network to begin with.

 

[Wonder Boy]

wireless firewire, eh? perhaps for video transmissions to the rumored apple box?

 

[Wash!!]

Telsa discover it

but, every speaker in your house would make an insane amount of noise, every CRT on the block would be useless, and you'd give your neighborhood cancer.

it's all about finding the right frequency to transmit the power. And it was all experimental in the 1800's and it was done with 1800's tech. Today it is more probable to make work, as of today we have cell phones that according to some groups also give you cancer, the radiation from your toaster give you cancer, anything give you cancer, who's to say that using wi-fi give you cancer...

The US government took all his research and experiments who knows what it can do today...

 

[Trowaman]

I'm likning this, but I'm still waiting for wireless speakers. 2 cords have really bugged me on my "wireless" iMac. Mouse and speaker cords. I got the mouse taken care of byt speakers . . . it could be so cooooolll . . . .

But let's see, we could also give me wireless hook up to my video camera and iPod. I really like where this is going.

 

[jackieonasses]

I'm likning this, but I'm still waiting for wireless speakers. 2 cords have really bugged me on my "wireless" iMac. Mouse and speaker cords. I got the mouse taken care of byt speakers . . . it could be so cooooolll . . . .

But let's see, we could also give me wireless hook up to my video camera and iPod. I really like where this is going.

well there are wireless speakers..but it uses radio frequencies...and is compressed...i think...

 

[X_Entity]

I love wireless stuff.

One of my neighbours ( don't know which one ) has just installed a wireless network which means I now have another link to the net doubling my effective bandwidth. With the advent of wireless storage as well I'll be laughing. Now all I need is for him to get a wireless display adapter to go with his wireless keyboard and mouse and before you know it I'll have hijacked his computer completely.

Is it really so hard to plug in a cable ?

Would you really want to sacrifice your data security for the sake of a second of convenience ?

Air is not a good transmission medium and transfer speeds will still be affected by atmospheric pressure, RF interference, wet leaves etc. etc. etc.

Wifi-FiWi a great toy to play with but I'd rather have a wired FireWire 1600 than a crippled Wireless version.

 

[gwangung]

What? Nobody's come up with WiFire?

 

[Hattig]

No more monitor cable - Check.

NO!

When will people realise that transmitting a display wirelessly is near impossible, unless it is reasonably basic, reasonably static or small.

A 1280x1024 display takes up 5MB of memory. Lets assume a 60Hz refresh rate. That is 300MB per second of data that has to be streamed 100% reliably. Easy over a cable, even though that is approaching the limits of the current DVI standard for digital video interconnect.

Firewire, even in its best wired incarnation is 800Mbps. You might be able to show a 640x480 display over that.

Wireless Firewire will undoubtably be slower - probably around 100Mbps. Not even enough for a 480x320 256-colour display to be updated at 60Hz. Maybe a whole new era of dumb PDAs and tablet PCs could be made using this technology - no local processing power except a screen, control circuitry and a WiFire chip - maybe some display cache memory to reduce bandwidth use on mainly static displays. Might as well add a processor to manage this all ... oh wait!

 

[Hattig]

I'm likning this, but I'm still waiting for wireless speakers. 2 cords have really bugged me on my "wireless" iMac. Mouse and speaker cords. I got the mouse taken care of byt speakers . . . it could be so cooooolll . . . .

Now this is a useful use.

A 6 speaker system at 24-bit resolution and 96kHz sampling rate is only 1.7MBps of data, or 14Mbps - a fraction of the bandwidth that even 100Mbps WiFire would provide.

Of course, now I'd need to power my speakers individually, and each speaker (or at least each group of speakers) would need its own amplification circuit ... but at least I won't have speaker cable limiting where I can place my speakers.

 

[Omad0n]

2 things, first the things that could come from a wire less fire wire could be really cool. Though as someone pointed out it will be a while. The other is that I wanted to thank you guys for talking a bunch about tesla. It's made me want to go read up some on this man. 🙂

 

[denm316]

I wireleass iPod dock would be nice, the iPod would not need to be modified, just the actual dock.

 

[appleface]

G5 imac

wireless imac monitors.

 

[PopularEthics]

Re: Wireless Displays

NO!

When will people realise that transmitting a display wirelessly is near impossible, unless it is reasonably basic, reasonably static or small.

A 1280x1024 display takes up 5MB of memory. Lets assume a 60Hz refresh rate. That is 300MB per second of data that has to be streamed 100% reliably. Easy over a cable, even though that is approaching the limits of the current DVI standard for digital video interconnect. Firewire, even in its best wired incarnation is 800Mbps. You might be able to show a 640x480 display over that.

Hold up. Why so powerful a monitor? a 1024 x 768 LCD at 24bit colour at 20 hz (You wouldn't need the crazy refresh speed that CRTs do because LCDs refresh the whole screen at once, not just one pixel at a time) would need only 400Mb/s AT MOST. A lossless compression scheme (ie many pixels on the desktop don't change from second to second) could halve that for all but full screen videos.

Wireless Firewire will undoubtbly be slower - probably around 100Mbps. Not even enough for a 480x320 256-colour display to be updated at 60Hz. Maybe a whole new era of dumb PDAs and tablet PCs could be made using this technology - no local processing power except a screen, control circuitry and a WiFire chip - maybe some display cache memory to reduce bandwidth use on mainly static displays. Might as well add a processor to manage this all ... oh wait!

No processor necessary, as long as the wireless protocol gets the same speed that the wired-firewire gets, I think you could work a great little display. (The 802.13 specs are talking about only 55Mbps, so I'm not too confident that it will match). Imagine a 2lb 1/2" thick pad you can carry anywhere in the house or office, but still have a cheap, upgradeable desktop in the closet somewhere.

I like! 😎

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

shouldn't we be calling this "wireless firewire" WiFi? after all it does run off the 802.11 standard if i'm not mistaken, so isn't it just another extension of it? someone please explain!

 

[Hattig]

Hold up. Why so powerful a monitor? a 1024 x 768 LCD at 24bit colour at 20 hz (You wouldn't need the crazy refresh speed that CRTs do because LCDs refresh the whole screen at once, not just one pixel at a time) would need only 400Mb/s AT MOST. A lossless compression scheme (ie many pixels on the desktop don't change from second to second) could halve that for all but full screen videos.

People are talking about connecting their system monitors up using this!
I assure you that they will expect more than 1024x768, or to be able to watch a video in more than 1/4 of the screen.

Lossless compression of displays works well when the display is reasonably static. MacOS X is not reasonably static.

You won't see Apple sell wireless displays for computers because people will expect it to work like a wired display, and that just isn't possible.

No processor necessary, as long as the wireless protocol gets the same speed that the wired-firewire gets, I think you could work a great little display. (The 802.13 specs are talking about only 55Mbps, so I'm not too confident that it will match). Imagine a 2lb 1/2" thick pad you can carry anywhere in the house or office, but still have a cheap, upgradeable desktop in the closet somewhere.

I like! 😎

That's a mightly large assumption there about wireless speeds. Leading edge Firewire speed at the moment is 800Mbps. Leading edge wireless speeds are around 100Mbps, but what is achieved is usually a lot less.

Anyway, processors are cheap when they aren't leading edge performers. Not having a processor in there would be a false economy. I like my PDAs to be usable out of the range of my system!

I'd rather have a system cost $50 more and be usable on its own, and simply use WiFire to access content, data, network, etc on a server machine than actually run itself on that machine. It would be nice to remove expensive costly PDA/mobile data storage solutions from the equation. WiFire would be able to handle streaming a DivX/QT/etc video without a problem, and hopefully the processor in the portable system will be powerful enough to decode and play it. Such an "iSlate" could run on a 4xx series processor from IBM, or even a clocked down 750 or similar.

 

[javabear90]

Seriously though. A few years back I read on news.com of a tech that allows electricity to flow through surface contact. So say your entire desktop is one big recharger. You wouldn't need wires. The kicker? Touching the surface won't electrocute you. Something with the materials used. I think it’s the same principle used for those Sonic care toothbrushes. Couple that with wireless Firewire and you get some very cool options. Drop your PDA, iPod, camera, external hard drive on your desk and they all start charging and all automatically link to your puter via wireless Firewire. Coolness. 😎

I've heard about this. My dream world: Every table top has one of these and gigabit free wireless every where. Of course with my G6 8.0 ghz laptop 😀

 

[arsa]

They just cannot pick their spectrum

UWB is very wide spectrum, blasts whole spectrum. It's basicaly a fast sequence of electric sparks. It doesn't use radio waves to transmit and modulate the data. The actual spark "bits" and timing between them are used to transmit data. That's why it's very limited by FCC in power output and hence range.

 

[ebunton]

Isn't Wireless FireWire just... "Fire"?

That's the funniest thing I've read today.
What exactly is the main difference between "Fire" and Wifi? Just speed? I'm assuming this "Fire" is faster right?

If so then wouldn't it be a natural evolution of the Wifi standard?

After Airport Extreme (802.11g)? Maybe it'll be called Airport Extremer?

Or am I completely clueless about this?

 

[jtquick2001]

wireless firewire, eh? perhaps for video transmissions to the rumored apple box?

That would rock!

 

[pjkelnhofer]

Now this is a useful use.

A 6 speaker system at 24-bit resolution and 96kHz sampling rate is only 1.7MBps of data, or 14Mbps - a fraction of the bandwidth that even 100Mbps WiFire would provide.

Of course, now I'd need to power my speakers individually, and each speaker (or at least each group of speakers) would need its own amplification circuit ... but at least I won't have speaker cable limiting where I can place my speakers.

So why is the speaker cable more limiting than the power cable?

For a laptop, I can see why wireless is a good thing, but for a desktop, I don't get it. A Bluetooth mouse and keyboard maybe convienient. Although at my work, some one walked of one of the wireless mice. At least with my wired one I always know where it is. What good would a wireless drive do you? Especially if it still needs to get power somewhere. A hot swappable drive would be much easier. Or maybe you could always just use the front ports on you computer.

Remember all these wireless gadgets don't send the data unidirectionally. For example if you live in an apartment building and your neighbor puts his BlueTooth, WiFi, Firewireless G5 against the same wall you do. That would be fun.

Is no one concern with the ever increasing amount of E-fields that we have to deal with on any give day. I feel like this is going to be the next "light pollution" people will realize that filling every availible bit RF bandwidth with crap is going to lead to other problems.

 

[Brian Haworth]

Isn't Wireless FireWire just... "Fire"?

I'd prefer to call it FireWireless or maybe Wi-FW.