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Sloshing Cellphones Reveal Their Contents
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 28, 2007 09:31 AM
from the because-you-can dept.
from the because-you-can dept.
holy_calamity writes "UK researchers have developed software that represents a handset's battery life by using a phone's speaker and vibrator to make a device feel and sound like it contains liquid. You give it a shake to find out how much is left. The same technique can be used to represent new messages by simulating balls rattling around inside a box. It runs on recent Nokias with accelerometers; video from the researchers explains it well." What a bizarrely fun idea.
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that's just stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Even the best battery "life" indicators I've ever seen mostly suck. If this one uses the dropoff in voltage as a detection device like every other one has for the last brazillion years, it'll basically be completely full for the life of the charge, and about 10 minutes before it tanks, if you're lucky, you'll get the joy of the sensation of a sloshing, albeit mostly empty sloshing, in your digital device.
Now, as for the detecting how many messages there are by simulating the sound of balls rattling around
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Re:that's just stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the better methods is to use a coulumb counter that attempts to measure the power put into a battery against the power removed from the battery. See http://www.linear.com/pc/productDetail.jsp?navId=H0,C1,C1003,C1037,C1134,P2354 [linear.com] for a typical device. Even using these, we only seem to be able to approach something that doesn't suck.
One of our devices has a tilt sensor, so I may try to impliment the sloshing sound as well as our normal battery icon on the display.
Parent
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That said, I appreciate you concede the difficulty of battery life measurement. I'd long since given up on paying too much attention to gauges, and instead pay more attention to keeping backup batteries for devices which have removeable ones (it actually is a large factor in my decision making process whether o
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How about throwing all the physics and chemistry out of the window and simply using good old statistics? In a lot of chases the device should now when the battery was charged, for how long it was charged and for how long it ran on that charge, just use that data to extrapolate how long it will last the next time you charge it.
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batteries in your typical portable hardware are not used like that. Users will rarely if ever discharge them completely because they want/need the device to be working at all times. Discharge rates and sometimes charge rates too vary depending on how the device is being used and so on.
colomb counting is a slightly better idea but you s
Re:that's just stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
This implementation in-and-of-itself does not really signify any important breakthrough to me. Just a bunch of geeks who took a feature and put a software aspect to it for a unique function. However, this is the second cell-phone shakey [slashdot.org] article I've seen on Slashdot recently. So, what really matters to me is the meta-content here: adding an accelerometer to a cellphone opens up a lot of functionality on the mobile platform.
Parent
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Re:that's just stupid (Score:5, Funny)
It's in reference to a joke I'd heard a while back...
In his early morning Iraq war briefing Bush's advisor said 2 Brazilian soldiers had died the day before. After a pause, Bush leaned over to Cheney and asked him, "How many zeros are in a brazillion?"
No political affiliation or skewering intended... just a funny joke.
Parent
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Not stupid, just different.
It's all about human interface. You may think it's dumb, but it may be just the thing that helps John Q. Public integrate a device into his lifestyle.
Remember that:Bat Summary Line (Score:2)
It's not as if the cell phone's contents are in any way being divulged... but rather a qualitative indication of battery life.
Toy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Toy (Score:5, Interesting)
You're new here, aren't you?
Show me anything in the world that a geek won't want to tinker with and hack in odd ways. It's this kind of thing that will eventually lead to Star Trek tech. It takes a hundred or a thousand "useless little hacks" to filter out the one gem that will be the killer hack. And sometimes, you can take a piece of one useless hack and a piece of another useless hack and put them together to make something awesome.
Yes, this may not be the most useful modification in the world, but think of what it could lead to...
Parent
Re:Toy (Score:5, Insightful)
The battery indicator on your screen is passive. It just sits there (largely unnoticed) until your critically low on battery and then it beeps at you incessantly. By adding a physical element to the indicator you provide an ongoing battery status (in a very easy to understand metaphor no less) that is much more difficult to ignore.
It is a very similar concept to the gestures used to control the iPhone. The trend in computing right now is to create interfaces that much more closely mimic physical experience. This has proven to greatly increase our ability to interact in meaningful ways with our machines. This is just another example of that.
Really it wins on two points: 1) It's a useful piece of tech. and 2) it's an insanely cool hack.
Parent
Re:Toy (Score:5, Insightful)
The battery indicator on your screen is passive. It just sits there (largely unnoticed) until your critically low on battery and then it beeps at you incessantly. By adding a physical element to the indicator you provide an ongoing battery status (in a very easy to understand metaphor no less) that is much more difficult to ignore.
Very good point, but I'm not convinced I'd like to shake my phone to get an indication of power (not that the standard power meter is going anywhere I suppose) but I'd like a passive aural indicator - how about the phone altering the pitch of all of those poloyphonic ringtones as the charge diminishes? Normal ringtone for 100-30% charge, and then increase the pitch delta as charge drops from that. As soon as you get a call or a text, you can immediately hear something's "wrong" with your phone (consider the age-old comedy stalwharts of the broken alarm bell or the out of tune piano), and it'll have the useful side effect of actually improving a large percentage of ghastly ringtones
Parent
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When you pick up an opened can of soda, do you have to shake it vigorously to figure out how full it is? No... you generally know how heavy a full can is, and how heavy an empty can is. When you pick up the can, the amount of inertia the can has tells you how heavy it is, just in one motion. Our brains rely on this kind of feedback when we handle physical objects. Ever picked up an empty can you thought was full? You end up exa
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Its the same with aircraft controls, that have been debated for many years. There are many advantages to making them all electronic, but the problem is that electronics tend to only give information to the user through lights and sounds. Mechanical operation on the other hand gives feel to the controls, which give
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It's "Blind"ingly Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to imagine that any blind user of a cell phone would think this is awesome. No longer do you have to wade through some exchange with a computer to figure out if you have messages; you just shake your cell phone. And figuring out your charge without any need for visual interaction must be useful, too.
Additionally, though, I don't think there is all that much problem with shaking solid-state electronics. The 'Wiimote syndrome' isn't at issue, because you're not trying to control cartoon characters on the screen - and shaking a rattle, say, is a far more sedate activity than swinging a hammer. Unless you're way, way hyper-aggressive.
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A cellphone without an accelerometer... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:A cellphone without an accelerometer... (Score:5, Funny)
However, if the cow would have an altimeter coupled to a wifi server, you could read out it's height independent of your own position so you wouldn't need to decide whether you should look up or down.
Parent
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Apostrophe abuse in summary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apostrophe abuse in summary (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Terror Alert! (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, I guess it means we can't take our mobile phones on airplanes anymore, can we?
Homeland Security Agent: "How much liquid is in that phone?"
You: "None. It's virtual liquid."
Homeland Security Agent: "It sounds like at least a few ounces."
You: "Virtual liquids have neither volume nor weight."
Homeland Security Agent: "Do I look stupid to you?"
You: "Can I take the fifth on that?"
Homeland Security Agent: "That's Mistake Number Two, bub. Quoting from documents concerning the governance or liberties of American citizens is suspicious activity Level Blue. Ever heard of Ron Paul?"
You: "Uh, sure."
Homeland Security Agent: "You're under arrest."
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I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
A solution to....? (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it seems to be a solution that was applied to a problem that didn't need solving.
Now, perhaps if they linked the sloshing behavior to the amount of milk left in the carton as reported via my networked refrigerator, they'd have me interested.
Juice (Score:3, Funny)
Battery life (Score:2, Insightful)
Battery life isn't important for me: thanks USB (Score:3, Interesting)
When cell phones had proprietary connectors that changed with each new model, battery life was maybe #3 on my list of important features. Now I don't even think of it. I can not recall a day in the past year when I had less than 60% battery life (even with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled on my HTC Trinity).
Is it really a big deal for a lot of people? Where are you that you can't plug in, even if just for 10-15 minutes to top off your battery?
Patent? (Score:2)
Couple of musings... (Score:2, Funny)
Cool, but how about accurate battery life? (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently, all battery charge indicators are wildly nonlinear and grossly inaccurate.
To be more specific. Conceptually, imagine a device that holds three small batteries instead of one large one, and drains them in succession one after the other. The battery life measurement on each battery would be somewhat imprecise, but when you'd exhausted the first battery you'd know that you really had 2/3 of the charge left; when you'd exhausted the second, you'd know that you really had 1/3 left.
Alternatively, how about a device that holds two smaller batteries and double-buffers them; that is, draws from one battery until it's exhausted, then draws from the second while allowing you to replace the first?
I'm not buying my Mum one of these... (Score:3, Funny)
Ha! I love it! (Score:4, Interesting)
Shaking the battery to hear how "full" it is, it's an intuitive approach for someone who knows nothing about technology and makes the geeks laugh, but here they go and make it work. Very, very funny. But this is the sort of thinking that helps make the toys easier to use. More power to 'em.
Why not do two things at once? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not as if the Slashdot crowd have atrophied wrist muscles after all
Shaking (Score:2)
Neat for the blind (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also, getting sloshed while on your cell phone will better allow you to divulge your contents to anyone unlucky enough to be in your address book.
Yeah, that's fun. I have a buddy who tends to call his ex-girlfriend whenever he gets tanked. It got to the point where I had to take his cellphone from him before we hit the bars.
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