Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #06922



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Sean Rigter rigter@cafe.net
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:18:17 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Radio Communications?


THIS is interesting!

I have some questions:

LCDnumber only or ASCII labels?
What is the modulation frequency?
What is the data rate?
Does it work with fluorescent lights?
Is it sensitive to IR?
Which 4 bit micro?
1/8" solar cell for receiver and power ?
Can the sound output can be used for a LED Tx?

regards

wilf

Elmo wrote:

> Hmmm...Interesting thread....
>
> I work at a company called "The ILID Partnership". We make Electronic
> Shelf Labels that replace paper labels that display the price of goods
> in supermarkets (www.ilid.com.au if your interested)
>
> The funky thing about our labels is they get their data from modulated
> light. We modulate our data onto the mains power and that oscillates the
> lights in a building enough that our labels can pick up the flicker
> (even though you cant see it) and they turn it back into data for
> display information.
>
> Why am i telling you this....
>
> Well for starters our labels use the solar robotics type 1/8" cell for
> its optical receiver. They work in extremely low lux levels (details are
> proprietary, but its very low), and over long distances away from any
> modulated transmission source. The circuit is made in SMT components and
> takes up less than 10mm x 10mm, and costs less than about $5(Aus) in
> components. The labels have a 4 bit micro (which can also generate
> sounds but we dont use that bit).
>
> As soon as i have something worthy of doing it to i intend to integrate
> the guts of one of these labels onto a bot along with an LED for
> transmitting, so that i can A) program information into by bots on the
> fly using the buildings lights and B) so that they can talk to each
> other using the LED to Tx and the 1/8" cell to Rx. I hope that this will
> also mean that when they are talking to each other they will try to face
> each other (the brightest light source in the area)
>
> My hope is to try to make a group of robots that can talk to each other,
> but mainly so that each robot can work out if there is another robot
> nearby so that i can try some flocking algorithms with them.
>
> Elmo out

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