Cool Infrared Gadgets

Healthcare devices with infrared

2008-10-07T15:08:00.001-07:00

I received an announcement forwarded from one of my readers about a healthcare product in Japan - Wireless Japan 08 show. Omron had introduced a weighing machine that uses infrared to beam data from the device to a computer for monitoring one's body fat over time - now that's a useful thing these days! Quite a clever thing. Here's the picture from the show, the Omron HBF-362 (beaming from the device) and from their website (the full view of the product), respectively:

Also from the same Wireless Japan 08, there were phones from Sharp and Docomo that have built-in health monitoring capabilities, and beaming to local devices using infrared. From the Sharp SH706iw can measure your heartrate using the sensor on the underside of the phone:

Here is Docomo's unidentified phone:

So I thought I should check out US products too, and lo and behold! There are at least two companies already using infrared in their products.

Roche Accu-Chek Blood Glucose Meter Systems:
Compact Plus Meter, Compact Meter, Aviva and Active models (in order below):

A diagram from the Roche product brochure showing how to transfer data:

Polar Systems makes sports monitoring devices with infrared to beam data to PCs:
RS800CX, S725X, CS600 and their IrDA-USB adaptor (below) - and 14 other models not shown here:

Phones with infrared

2008-10-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

OK, so there is sufficient question out there about whether there are really any phones with infrared. So, here is the list I have personally found with IrSimple. I have not bothered with the slower IrDA 1.0 versions which are 115kbps or even the slightly faster IrDA 1.1 at 1Mbps. Just to prove to myself that the next generation IrSimple with 4Mbps that the Infrared Data Association members are talking about is real.
I will continue to update here when I see new models introduced. Watch this space!

The 'Flip Video' is for sharing....

2008-09-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of the buzz surrounding the "Flip Video" from Pure Digital Technologies based in San Francisco? Apparently Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg are all flipping over their new Flip camcorders!
It is about the size of a candybar cellphone but about 1.25inches thick with a single red record button on the back. It has only solid state memory (1 or 2GB models available)
The design center focuses on exactly the way Gen-Y are using camcorders today: take a short clip and then share it with your friends on youtube or facebook. Builtin software dispenses with the need to install software.
Jonathan Kaplan, CEO of Flip Video says it is so easy "when you want to share the video, all you have to do is flip the USB and plug in the video to share on youtube!"
But the question this blogger wants to know is what happens if you want to share with someone in the taxi home the video of Johnny Depp that you caught in the nightclub?

Printing from your phone?

2008-09-09T23:56:00.000-07:00

So how do you print that email message from your smartphone if you really needed to? Perhaps it is a set of driving directions or a coupon?
Sharp Japan has just introduced a fax machine (UX-D90CL or 'fappy') that allows you to also beam your message via infrared for printing using IrDA's IrSimple standard. Sharp's marketing has decided to call it "cordless digital fappy". I suppose if you desperately want a copy of your driving directions from your phone printed out or faxed, you just point and shoot it to the 'fappy'. Note the infrared window below the numeric pad.
Sharp UX-D90CL

Other smaller printers, mostly portable and thermal, are also announced recently with IrSimple.
Seiko DPU-S445 and Extech S5400
Three photo printers from Canon has already been available with IrSimple:
Canon SELPH CP770, Canon ES1 and Canon iP90

I anticipate there are more products out there in with IrSimple that we have not heard about. Watch this space!

Gigabit handheld speeds. Now THAT's blazing fast!!

2008-09-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

Looks like the folks at IrDA can no longer be accused of being asleep at the wheel for the past few years. At Wireless Japan 2008, one of the members of the Infrared Data Association demonstrated "Giga-IR", a whopping 1 Gbps data transmission on a handheld prototype.

At that speed, peer-to-peer beaming of any sort of files from your handheld phone/camera/pda/mp3/videocamera/etc becomes a reality. Today, the closest technology you can consider is Bluetooth but with its 3Mbps data rate, will severely restrict what file sizes you can beam. Single songs may be OK but longer videos may be tedious. RF technologies typically get harder to design and significantly more expensive as the data rates increase.

KDDI, who developed the "Giga-IR" expects beaming 20-30 songs using this new technology will take only 1-2 seconds. Now, that's impressive! Now applications are no longer limited by speed.

See video below.

IrDA has initiated a working group to complete the standard for "Giga-IR" which is expected to be complete by March 2009. Now, that too, is fast!
I believe the Giga-IR module prices will be significantly lower than their RF counterparts and they will be able to persuade more device companies to implement this new technology.

Well done IrDA & KDDI!

A place to beam your photo!

2008-08-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

Here is confirmation that perhaps infrared capability is not as rare as we think, especially if a vendor (this one seems to be Italian) is prepared to incorporate it into a photo kiosk in a public place. I recently received a picture of a photo kiosk at Geneva Airport that has IR capability (including other normal slots for various memory cards). I guess it makes sense if you just wanted a photo from your vacation to give to your friend as you depart at the airport - for keepsakes, and to remember the good times by!
In case you haven't noticed, most digital cameras have their memory slots together with the battery slot - so if you want to just pull out a quick photo to print, you have to shut down the camera completely! That makes no sense. Beaming the photo to the kiosk seems a cleaner approach. Besides it is less likely you will pick up any viruses if you did not plug your memory card into some strange slot.....(especially on holiday ;-)
Anyway, if anyone has pictures of other IR examples, do send me a photo and I will report it here.

Beaming 10 megapixel photos work!

2008-08-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

Here is something you don't see everyday - beaming photos from one camera to another.
I came across these Fujifilm FinepixZ cameras at London Heathrow's Terminal camera shop and decided to check it out. (notice the security attachments still on the cameras as I played with them at the counter!)
I took a random picture at the shop with the black camera and beamed it to the pink camera at the counter (see video).

10 megapixel photo beamed in about 6 seconds - not bad! This uses infrared. Definitely faster than Bluetooth.
There was no indication if the Finepix camera implemented IrSimple. The button I pressed was simply labelled "IR". The sales assistant did not know that the camera had this capability until I showed it. I sure hope Fujifilm would promote this capability more visibly! A quick check on Google showed that these cameras are already available in UK, Europe, USA and also parts of Asia.
So why would anyone want to take a picture and beam it to another camera? I can see the instances when you and your friends on holiday have just taken a group picture and everyone also wants the one. All the cameras pop up and the group hangs around for the next 15 min while one camera after another is used to take 'just another photo'. If the cameras had infrared, the group photo could be beamed to each other at the bar!
Is that all? I suppose if a handphone has the same infrared standard, the camera can beam the photo to the phone too. Now, that will be an interesting situation. I can then imagine camera-to-cameras be primarily beaming photos. But if a handphone had infrared too, the camera can beam photos to it and vice-versa. But the handphone can also beam to each other - other file types can be beamed too. How about music and music videos? Wouldn't it be great if iPhone had infrared?

"Millenials"?

2008-07-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

I learned a new word today - "millenial" - it turns out is another name for "Gen-Y'ers". Yes, they are born between 1980 and 2000 and are also known as the Internet Generation, the Digital Generation, the Nintendo Generation.

In-Stat reports that mobile social networking is popular with the millenial generation (blogging, photo and video sharing, SMS, IM) and that the mobile handset is simply an extension of the user in most aspects of life.

In a unique book "Connecting to the Net Generation" (2007), Dr Reynol Junco and Dr Jeanna Mastrodicasa found in a survey of 7,705 college students in the US that:

97% own a computer
94% own a cellphone
76% use Instant Messaging (15% are logged on 24/7)
34% use websites as their primary source of news
28% author a blog and 44% read blogs
97% have downloaded music using peer-to-peer file sharing
49% regularly download music using peer-to-peer file sharing
75% of college students have a Facebook account
60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod

I guess the iPhones and gPhones are heading in the right direction.

So Nokia buys the rest of Symbian....

2008-06-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

On 24 June Nokia, supplier of the world's most popular smartphone platform (the S60), announces it is buying the rest of Symbian for €264 million and then - wait for it - turning it over to the Symbian Foundation! The Foundation is a non-profit with 20 or so members whose goal is to help developers adopt Symbian OS. 10 years ago Symbian was just another British company marketing the Psion organizer before it stopped its hardware business to concentrate its OS for smartphones - smart move! With the support of Nokia and also Sony Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens, Symbian has gained 60% of the global smartphone market amounting to over 200 million phones.

Clearly Nokia wasn't going to be left out with Google's Android (and the Open Handset Alliance) on the one hand and the iPhone phenomenon on the other. Nokia definitely isn't behaving like a traditional hardware company!

So where does that leave Microsoft's Mobile Windows whose licensing costs about $8 to $15 for each handset and has only 13% of the whole handset market??

Google vs Apple?

2008-06-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

So how does one try to compete with the phenomenal success of Apple's iPhone? Apple's 10 million shipment target by end of 2008 does not seem aggressive in anyone's imagination with what they already shipped.

The rumor-mill about the G-phone was so high that there was a (slight) disappointment when it turned out there was no phone. But the demo of the operating system, Android provided even more possibilities. So Google was not going into the handset business! The Android architecture is fully open, full of features and tools - to be expected from an open organization like Google. Check out the demos of what is possible here.

But I believe this is an even better strategy - get even more developers and manufacturers to support the OS openly by creating an open forum - the Open Handset Alliance. Big name mobile operators, handset manufacturers and semiconductor companies have become members. Of course there is the unaccounted army of developers lurking in garages and basements coding away hoping all to win part of the US$10 million challenge to come up with cool apps!!

So Google's strategy is to throw money at developers with their innovative Android OS. Apple's approach is to entice support from developers by the sexy product that is already flying off the shelves. With the two juggernauts on the road, who is there to stand in the way? What is Nokia going to do?

Is iPhone the new Walkman?

2008-06-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

The iPhone phenomenon is clearly amazing. The design is sexy, the marketing slick and the product so cool. The screen is truly big enough to share a high res photo with a friend in Starbucks, or listening to your personal music mix while waiting. Everything else is un-necessary to carry around. It is difficult to ask for more in one device to carry around - anywhere in the world.

That is why it is probably not difficult to imagine success of shipping 10 million iPhones by end of 2008 to the 70 countries that Mr Jobs plans to introduce in. That is probably only the beginning. What has got the start-up community in a frenzy again is allowing application developers to make money on iPhone too. 5,200 developers attended Apple's Developer Conference in June to here the introduction of iPhone 3G and already 250,000 iPhone SDK have been downloaded. Piper Jaffray's analyst Gene Munster predicts a US$1 billion+ eco-system developed by the end of 2009. What a great strategy! iPhone economy, eco-system, whatever you want to call it, with developers around the world, the iPhone will stand to challenge handphone manufacturers around the world. Join iPhone or be history!

Crossing the Chasm - it is not really that Ir....simple!

2007-11-20T00:36:00.000-08:00

The big $74million dollar question once you have developed a cool standard is how to get the industry to adopt it quickly. Most industry associations are formed to develop and propagate the standard that is developed.

Some options include whether to provide the standards document free to anyone and everyone who wants it or charge for it, cover only printing costs or other overhead costs too. Or perhaps insist that only members can get access to the standards document, and as members, there are membership dues - which itself is not unreasonable.

The argument gets more complicated if the model gets complicated, such as charging per unit royalties, or charge sliding scale depending on certain criteria. This certainly generates more revenue into the association's coffers but starts impacting whether the model is to create an industry standard or to generate revenue. If early adopters have to stop and think about whether they like the charging philosophy, it detracts from the impulse of jumping on the bandwagon and crossing that chasm.

The fundamental issue for product managers who are deciding to deploy the standard is whether the standard itself has sufficient value to warrant the cost of adding it to the product. Just think of Betamax vs VHS - where Betamax was clearly superior but charged too much and eventually lost to VHS.

The value for the standard has to be high and obvious. These product managers have to be assured through market data or other means that the standard will be demanded by users and if their products do not incorporate the feature, their competition will win. That is always the deciding factor. In this case, then the cost in getting the standard is no issue. Consider Qualcomm - the licensing fee is very high but it was still adopted by many companies because there was no choice!

But if the value of the standard is in question, then there will always be a discussion of price. Once that happens, it is almost better to charge minimally using one of the earlier options - because the objective is to propagate the standard. Without the rest of industry adopting it, the industry association will eventually cease to exist anyway.

So, the best strategy for any industry association is to focus on spreading the word - about the standard, its utility, its adoption and let the resulting demand drive new members to the association.

IrSimple - is it going to be really that simple?

2007-11-20T00:21:00.000-08:00

The diligent developers at IrDA have come up with a new standard that will address most of the complaints about IrDA 1.0, SIR, MIR, FIR, and the alphabet soup. And have called it IrSimple.

Simple to use - you can point any virtually anything that is IrSimple and press a button - and it works.
I say 'vitrually' because it is not clear yet if there are any incompatibilities when real products are produced. And if there are any exceptions, then this will again be a big disappointment because once again there will be products that will be called IrSimple, but not really work - I really hope not!

Anyway, the good news is IrSimple will be 16 Mbps - that is 4 times faster than IrDA FIR! It means we can realistically beam an MP3 file and not have to wait 5 minutes and more!

Unless the Bluetooth SIG has been working secretly for a while, it does not seem they have a high speed version of their well known standard yet.

In addition, the IrDA folks have also agreed that this function can be implemented as a single button push, much like how your remote controller works - and I understand some products will even have its own hardware button on the product. So no more clicking through the menus to find the IrDA function to switch on and then click through to find the file to beam! Hurray! This alone will significantly increase the user awareness of IrDA in any product.

Get more information about IrSimple at the IrDA website: http://www.irda.org

Can I have that picture you just took?

2007-11-19T23:24:00.000-08:00

SCENARIO: You just took a picture of your friends at a restaurant on a farewell dinner on your camera. And of course, you are not going to see each other for 6 months. So, when your friend asks: "Can I have that picture you just took?" what would you do?

Yesterday's answer: "Sure, I'll send it to your new address as soon as I develop it."

Today's answer can be: "Sure, I'll bluetooth it to your phone." This is because the camera you used is a camera phone with Bluetooth enabled. Sometimes you may even hear "Sure, let me beam it to your phone" - implying the infrared (IrDA) capability.

However, both answers today are very rare - in spite of what the developers of Bluetooth or IrDA tell you. Users just are not that ready to take the leap yet to transfer photos from one phone to another. Why?

Is it because they have tried to do it and found the transfer too slow?
Is it because they are aware of the function and tried to use the capability but cannot find it on the phone?
Is it because they are not aware of the function - and so have not tried it at all?
Is it because they have no need for the transfer, even with Bluetooth and IrDA present?

If the answer is in the first two questions, then the solution is a technical one.
If the answer is in the last two questions, then the solution is a marketing one.

For Bluetooth, the awareness is relatively higher but their issue is the transfer rate is too slow.

For infrared, IrDA has developed a faster version called IrSimple, but the awareness of IrDA functionality by end users continues to be a big problem. Companies in Japan have already launched IrSimple products, but the rest of the world is still hesitant.

Have you put your camera to your ear lately?

2007-11-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

It seems these days to be a trend that people are putting their little pocket cameras to the ears and talking into it. Of course, this is not your normal Nikon or Olympus SLR sized one. But hey, that may be in someone's product roadmap! I am talking of course about those hand phone cameras - or should we call it a camera phone?

In any case, we have mostly considered the picture-taking capability as an added phone functionality, instead of the 'talking part' added to the camera functionality. So, what does that mean? One way to look at it is that the hand phone is integrating the camera.

So, what do you now want to do with your phone after you take pictures? Store the photo, show off your pictures (or even video) to your friends, post it on YouTube, print it later, send it to a friend across the country, copy it to your friend's phone, and so on.

I have personally even taken a picture of a coffee house in Beijing, send it to a translator to tell me how to pronounce it because I needed to tell someone what it is called - and the translator sends me back the 'pinyin' pronounciation by SMS - all within 3 minutes of me standing in front of the coffee house. Now, that's really cool!

Why do we carry only hand phones today?

2007-11-19T17:28:00.001-08:00

Most of us have only one device in our pocket (or belt for the really techies) and that is usually a hand phone. Of course, there are some of us who also have a PDA, but that is going the same way as bell-bottoms. The old argument that one would rather have multiple devices has gone out of fashion because it is cooler to have one whizbang device than 3 old ones. Just look at why the iPhone is flying off the stores.

Simply, the functionality has become usable and rich enough to replace the other ones when you are away from your desk. Or in the case of the young and the young-at-heart (in Japan or elsewhere), their only experience had been the hand phone for everything they do since childhood!

The other useful functions like picture taking, video recording, voice recording are all now integrated into the single indispensable hand phone - which incidentally also makes phone calls. So why bother to carry other things? They only need additional chargers.