Li-Fi

[LonestarCBR]

I'm sure some of you IT geeks are more up to speed on this than I, but interesting...
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technolo ... &ocid=iehp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DarcShadow]

Interesting. Hard to see it as a replacement for Wi-Fi, but could see it as a complementary technology.

[fixxervi6]

Laser style data transmission died out a long time ago for good reason. I'll admit it's neat but beyond that it's not very good.

[LonestarCBR]

Man, and I was hoping they'd incorporate it into a Lava Lamp.

[111]

I've actually been watching this technology for about 5 years now. I have some skepticism, but I still have high hopes for it and think it is very possible.Cisco and http://purelifi.com/ both have some good presentations.

The current cisco switches will deliver 60 watts of power per port. That is plenty of power for numerous devices. including VDI clients, LED lights, etc. If you think about an office building environment. you can install LED lighting through out the entire building which all connect to POE switches. those LED lights all have a frequency that you can transmit data over. So you can light your building and transmit data all with the same infrastructure. This will also have huge benefits since your lighting system is connected to a data network. you can now control it with software for energy efficiency and whatever else the mind can come up with.


I am also very excited for photonics. I know various vendors are working on photonics and I believe that HP has promised within two generations their Blade server chassis will have a photonics backplane. I believe it is said that 250 petabytes of data can be addressed within a second with a photonic CPU.

[JTChiTown]

What?

[LonestarCBR]

I guess that will be called Pi-Fi.

[DarcShadow]

I wonder about interference from multiple light sources. Will all the lights in the building be transmitting exactly the same thing? If so how will every light be synced? Or how well will the receiving device be able to tolerate shifts in data from multiple sources. If every light is not transmitting the same thing, how will the receiving device handle multiple data streams and will it be able to separate them or will they all just merge and become white noise? Also, how will the device transmit back to the lights. You're going to need a pretty strong light on your phone to be able to transmit back to the lights in the building.

There are a lot of obstacles to over come to make this technology viable for consumer use.

[dufremle]

This will probably be good for secure rooms, where you aren't moving around a lot. Uploading will be a problem, as Matt said.

[fixxervi6]

I wonder about interference from multiple light sources. Will all the lights in the building be transmitting exactly the same thing? If so how will every light be synced? Or how well will the receiving device be able to tolerate shifts in data from multiple sources. If every light is not transmitting the same thing, how will the receiving device handle multiple data streams and will it be able to separate them or will they all just merge and become white noise? Also, how will the device transmit back to the lights. You're going to need a pretty strong light on your phone to be able to transmit back to the lights in the building.

There are a lot of obstacles to over come to make this technology viable for consumer use.

And in the mean time better technologies that are more reliable are coming online.

I've actually been watching this technology for about 5 years now. I have some skepticism, but I still have high hopes for it and think it is very possible.Cisco and http://purelifi.com/ both have some good presentations.

The current cisco switches will deliver 60 watts of power per port. That is plenty of power for numerous devices. including VDI clients, LED lights, etc. If you think about an office building environment. you can install LED lighting through out the entire building which all connect to POE switches. those LED lights all have a frequency that you can transmit data over. So you can light your building and transmit data all with the same infrastructure. This will also have huge benefits since your lighting system is connected to a data network. you can now control it with software for energy efficiency and whatever else the mind can come up with.


I am also very excited for photonics. I know various vendors are working on photonics and I believe that HP has promised within two generations their Blade server chassis will have a photonics backplane. I believe it is said that 250 petabytes of data can be addressed within a second with a photonic CPU.

I see 0 advantage in running your lighting off of POE

[JeffStrom]

The largest barrier to adoption that I have seen to newer light based technologies isn't the light tech itself, but it is the massive increase in performance of RF and electric interconnects making the extra cost and constraints of light tech unnecessary. Light generally leads in performance or by having a novel application but never seems to manage to get a cost advantage where the consumer market is concerned. While the more traditional tech lags behind, it manages to keep a steady pace increasing performance as the demand grows. In enterprise and telecom, sure, light has been a staple for a long time because it overcomes some of their unique problems, like copper loss over distance, the number of wires required for a data center, or extreme data rates. In consumer products there will have to be an advantage for the average person before it gets real traction in that market.

Anyway, the whole thing is just a race between light, RF, and copper and we are the winners! Yea us!

[LonestarCBR]

Dang...sounds a lot like motorcycle evolution, doesn't it.

[dufremle]

What happens with light tech when you want to use it in the dark? Is it on a visible wavelength? It would suck not to be able to use it in the dark.