BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG FAT INTERNET CONNECTION
Oct. 9th, 2008 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrog[One reason I likes my job? I get paid to read and write about stuff like this...]
ITEM: [via Science Daily]: In future, you will be able to get a broadband Internet connection via LED lights in yr ceiling.
The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, which is part of an $18.5 million, multi-year National Science Foundation grant awarded to Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of New Mexico, is working on “optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a Wi-Fi access point.”
Like so.
"Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires," said BU Engineering Professor Thomas Little. "This could be done with an LED-based communications network that also provides light – all over existing power lines with low power consumption, high reliability and no electromagnetic interference. Ultimately, the system is expected to be applicable from existing illumination devices, like swapping light bulbs for LEDs."
What WILL they think of next?
For the record, you’re looking at data connection speeds between 1 and 10 Mbps. Available at Best Buy in probably 15 years or so.
Making things with light,
This is dF
ITEM: [via Science Daily]: In future, you will be able to get a broadband Internet connection via LED lights in yr ceiling.
The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, which is part of an $18.5 million, multi-year National Science Foundation grant awarded to Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of New Mexico, is working on “optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a Wi-Fi access point.”
Like so.
"Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires," said BU Engineering Professor Thomas Little. "This could be done with an LED-based communications network that also provides light – all over existing power lines with low power consumption, high reliability and no electromagnetic interference. Ultimately, the system is expected to be applicable from existing illumination devices, like swapping light bulbs for LEDs."
For the record, you’re looking at data connection speeds between 1 and 10 Mbps. Available at Best Buy in probably 15 years or so.
Making things with light,
This is dF
