Boston University Working On LED Wireless Networks 179
Madas writes "This article on Absolute Gadget details how researchers at Boston University's College of Engineering are working on devloping wireless networks that use LED lights instead of normal radio waves. This research apparently has other uses in the automobile industry. Apparently the LEDs could warn you if the driver in front has put the brakes on so could avoid hitting the car in front. Personally, I'd use the vision balls that are in my thought box."
Re:Brake Lights (Score:2, Interesting)
You could have it so the brightness of the brake lights describes how far down the pedal is. You could even have it so if there's a sudden, heavy push to the pedal, they could blink rapidly.
Also, the people who ride their brake pedal won't be an annoyance to other drivers because their little pedal tap won't create a huge change in the brightness of their brake lights.
Forget the network (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Vision balls? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhh.. eyeballs are merely the extension of the brain, they in a sense ARE your thought box, just another aspect of your mind.
No, not the whole eyeball, just the retina and optic nerve. As doctors stuck needles in my left eye in 2006, turning me into a cyborg [slashdot.org] and giving me far better than a normal person's vision (20/15, before surgery it was 20/400 and I wore thick glasses since childhood. You will be assimilated.) and again this past April I've learned a lot about how eyeballs work. [slashdot.org]
If you damage your retina, it doesn't hurt. Your brain percieves damage to the retina as a flash of light. If you are badly nearsighted you are in danger of a torn or detached retina. If you see flashes, followed by black snow and/or a black snake, get immediate medical help. If you don't you will become irreversably blind.
Re:Brake Lights (Score:3, Interesting)
> Dude aren't those called brake lights?
The light part would remain, to tell YOU the guy in front is braking. But now imagine that every light on every vehicle were also beaconing a unique identifier along with current speed and acceleration. You car would notice a car in front of you (because it has been seeing it with the front mounted sensor for a bit, thus it has to be in front and it could likely even know it is in the same lane) just started drasticly slowing down and you haven't hit your brakes. So it does something, hopefully themeable. Imagine the possibilities. Or fear them as the case may be.
LED Pay Phone Tap (Score:3, Interesting)
At the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, in the Student Union on the main campus (not East Campus), there is still a bank of pay telephones under one of which is a large metal box with a single LED on it, still there even after the remodel since I was a student there. One day between classes I observed someone using that particular pay phone and seeing the LED on that box alternately flickering in concert with the person's lips, then again presumably in sync with the sound coming from the other end of that call. I've long thought that if I converted that brightness pattern back to sound, I could listen to both ends of the conversation at a distance.
And I also wondered what the purpose of that box truly was.
Re:Brake Lights (Score:2, Interesting)
Just replace the top/middle/third brake light with a large-ish display that shows the speed of the vehicle, if it starts dropping rapidly you know you need to brake.
Also handy when you're in fast moving traffic and round a bend to catch up to a vehicle, for several seconds you have no idea if it's stopped, going very slow or just slowish. if there's a fat "32" on it and your dash reads "64" you know to get over into the next lane.
If your dash display was also digital then when you crossed a border into a metric/non-metric country you could flip a switch, even have mph use red leds and kph orange, enough so that locl law enforcement has a quick easy way of determining you're using the wrong setting.