Tuesday, 7 October 2008

LiFi?

Honey!  Turn the light back on, I was just downloading!

How's this for a very clever idea?  This is pretty clever.  Put the network transmission and the control circuit in the light bulb.  Things that are not so hot are the power vampire effects of electronics in each bulb, even a few milliwatts of radiated signal can cost a few whole watts of energy, and of course there has to be a signal receiving portion of the circuit switched on for a definite period every few milliseconds to capture any commands that come along in case the light and the wireless AP are both turned off.

And before anyone says "they will switch it off when not in use, dummy," I refer you to the light switch in their diagram which mentions it will provide "encoded data - on/off" and that means the power on power off signals will only put the LED bulb in a kind of suspend mode, not switch off current altogether.

The other thing I can think of is a bit more prosaic.  Even LED bulbs will fail from time to time, and that means some areas will be without light - and without network coverage.  I can still work at my desk if the lights go down to quite dim, but I couldn;t do much if my network connection vanished.

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