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Ever wonder what happened to LEDs as a WiFi alternative? Well, wonder
no more, because visible light communication is here -- in the
municipal offices of St. Cloud Minnesota, at least. Starting tomorrow,
LVX System, a Minnesota start-up, is installing the first of a series
of LED fixtures that will use flashing lights to connect office
workers to the internet, while saving big on the electric bill. The
fixtures also function as regular overhead lights, using 36 watts of
energy where 100 watts were once necessary. The setup consists of
clusters of LEDs that switch on and off thousands of times per second
at intervals undetectable to the human eye. The flashes emit binary
code data -- off equals zero and on equals one -- that is received by
special patented modems. Lights on these modems then transmit data
back to the fixtures, and voila, you've got internet. According to
LVX, light-powered networks are far less crowded and far more secure
than their predecessors. Unfortunately, LVX's current incarnation
transmits data at about 3Mbps -- a mere pittance compared to standard
WiFi or Ethernet. Then again, 3Mbps is certainly fast enough for a
city employee to perform really important tasks like keeping track of
their favorite gadget blog, so we'll take it.
[Thanks, Andrew]
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