Friday was certainly the low point of CEATEC JAPAN this year, but expect the convention to be in full swing for its final day tomorrow. Yet it will have been today, because our coverage is a day behind. Whoops. Stupid time difference.
Today’s coverage includes a DVD/MiniDV/hard drive recorder from JVC, more from the Visible Light Communications Consortium (as was covered on Day 2), and finally an implementation of a bizarre Metal Gear-ish technology called “Non-Audible Murmur.”
This is more of a “yeah it exists” type product than anything else. As you can see from the picture, this is not only your standard run-of-the-mill hard drive/DVD recorder, it’s also equipped with a MiniDV tape deck. You can drop your MiniDVs right to the hard drive, edit them, and spit them out on a DVD. Amateur porn, anyone?
In our coverage of Day 2 of this year’s convention, we talked about using visible light to transmit data. I guess I came off as this being some sort of new and marvelous technology. Well, it’s still a marvelous technology, but it appears it’s not as new as I thought. The “Visible Light Communication Consortium” held a seminar on Day 4 of CEATEC JAPAN 2004, where among other things, they revealed that the inventor of this technology is none other than good old Alexander Graham Bell. Good old Al conducted tests back in 1880 with what he named the “Photophone” – he held the world’s first (and I do mean first) wireless phone call, using visible light as his communications medium.
We mentioned Professor Nakagawa (chair of this “Visible Light Communications Consortium”) in our Day 2 coverage as well – he was back in action on Day 4 to speak at the seminar. Based on tests he conducted back in middle school (must be the rice), Prof. Nakagawa found that the key to fast transmissions for visible light-based communications was the speed at which the light source itself would react. Thankfully, lights have come quite a ways from the days of Mr. Bell – today’s LEDs light up “instantly” compared to the seconds it would take light bulbs to reach full illumination back in 1880. According to Professor Nakagawa, standard white LED lights currently available on the market have been confirmed to have a transmission speed of around 80Mbps, though this number does vary slightly depending on the light’s power. Interestingly enough, the color of the LED itself also makes a difference.
Professor Nakagawa highlighted during the seminar that the advantages to visible light communications are a low-priced infrastructure and high-precision system. Specifically speaking, visible light communications are both cheap to make and implement; and highly accurate. He couldn’t help but bring up an example of an automated robot using an array of LEDs to gather light data so that they can virtually “see” where they are in a situation. That would be creepy, needless to say.
Another point Prof. Nakagawa touched on was that this system probably isn’t well suited for mobile applications. Why? “Visible light communications may be possible up to a number of gigabits per second, but doing so requires the terminals to be placed only centimeters away from one another.” At least he’s being honest with us. He pointed out that for mobile applications, technologies such as wireless LAN and UWB will perhaps be a better option, as they don’t require two devices to be too close together.
At the Mitsumi booth, the company was displaying a technology currently undergoing joint development with NTT DoCoMo. They’re calling it an “inside-the-body microphone,” which apparently uses a technology called NAM (“Non-Audible Murmur”) to detect the transmissions of sound through your own body. I half expected to see “DARPA” somewhere in this article, because the Non-Audible Murmur gets only more covert: Non-Audible Murmur recognition can also pick up voiceless sounds inside of your own mouth. I’m thinking the military would be interested in this technology (if they’re not researching it already), but Japan is all healthcare; the technology is being developed so that people who are sick and cannot talk can still communicate.
Or are they? At CEATEC, Mitsumi displayed a version of the microphone that acts as an earphone/microphone for cellular phones. Damn, I SO saw that one coming!
Read – CEATEC JAPAN 2004 Link List [Impress Watch]
