rss feedAug 19
CRISTAL is positioned as an alternative to the many remote controls we have in our living room. But that doesn’t do any justice to the really coolness of this application of (highly interactive and informational) AR. Watch this video:
Some argue that it will take a long time before this technology will break through due to the fact that infrared is the current standard communication technology for remote controls and the devices they control. That will not be an issue for very long, though, since devices at home are increasingly inter-connected through home networks. TVs, laptops, computers, iPods, mobile phones already often have WiFi built-in. The only thing we’ll need to be worried about is viruses :)
Wi-Fi networks are a huge step forward, but they don’t begin to come close to what is necessary to make these devices truly interact. Where is the common operating system, the standard communications interface? Wi-Fi connects the physical layer, and that’s great, but the application layer is where we need standards if these things are going to work.
In fact, Wi-Fi is a great example of the problem here. It is becoming the standard not because it is the best communication protocol for this stuff, but because it has critical mass. Wi-Fi is inefficient from a power standpoint and therefore practically unusable in many applications. But because so many people have installed Wi-Fi networks in order to get the Internet on their laptops (and now smartphones), there are several companies working on solving the power issues and adopting Wi-Fi to applications better suited to other protocols (like ZigBee, Z-Wave, and even Bluetooth).
The issue remains: how are we going to get thousands of hardware manufacturers — many of which view each other as competitors — to standardize an application communication protocol as would be necessary to enable bi-directional and meaningful communication among devices as would be necessary to implement a remote control like CRISTAL? Every day that we continue without a standard the job becomes more difficult. It’s already too late for this to happen.
It’s true that WiFi connects the devices only at the physical layer. But that’s already a big step forward. because, the next step is to have them talk UPnP (which can also be used over Bluetooth).
And why is WiFi better than infrared or Bleutooth in this case? Because it doesn’t require the line of sight of infrared devices and has a wider reach than Bluetooth has.
The issue of ZigBee is the lack of penetration. Whereas WiFi is supported by many device manufacturers. But of course this could rapidly change. Who knows for sure?
As long as it works well and it works fast and doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg :)