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3-D printed plastic objects that can communicate with WiFi devices
- vog 9y agoThis is a surprisingly simple solution to the problem: Make the working "device" (3D printed object) do as little work as possible - just enough to be detectable by the surrounding devices that are "real" computers anyway.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoIt's a bit like it sending out an audio signal (which would be another option I think) that can be interpreted by a receiver.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoAn example: having your IoT base listen for frequencies made by your kettle's whistle, or your washing machine's beeper.
- jpindar 9y agoThis has been done - there are modules that detect and decode audio (which sounds a bit like R2D2). The manufacturer provides clips of this audio, which you could play from an app, allowing a phone to control something without it having to be on a network. Unfortunately, AFAIK the technology doesn't have a searchable name, so I can't find anything about it now. Of course, being able to listen for an arbitrary audio signal would be even more useful.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoHere's a stupid idea I have (I'm pretty sure it's patented 'till kingdom come, but if not, then this is prior art and I want this to be public domain): (side view) +-------------+ +---+ BUTTON +--------------------------------+ | | | | | +-------------+ | -+ <-- valve | | +-------- -------------------------------------+ | | flute x x x x x x x x x x <-- sounds comes | +-----------------------------------------------+ out here +--------------------------------------------------+ x - a hole with an externally accessible lever that can be used to open or close it Basically, you press the button, which pushes air through a flute, thus making a sound. The sound is configurable through pluggable holes (marked with x). In the diagram above there are 10 of them, giving you 1024 possible sound frequency combinations to listen for with your central IoT device. Pros: - No electricity needed. - Fully configurable, open source. - 3D-printable maybe? Still, can be entirely plastic, so even more dirt-cheap to manufacture than the backscatter thingie. - Less chance of interference - it's easier to keep the sound contained within your apartment than it is to keep radio waves.
- logfromblammo 9y agoThat's not quite how flutes work. Two open tone holes in the same air column do not produce two distinct tones. They combine to change the effective length of the air column, which then provides a resonance for one tone, the frequency of which is determined by the length and the speed of sound, which in turn is mostly determined by temperature, and partly by the humidity. You still need a reed to produce the initial vibration. I think what you are aiming for is more on the order of a disk siren. The rotation speed could be adjusted to produce a different base frequency, and one siren disk can support tone production from several air streams, each aimed at a different radius of the disk. Blocking off or opening the individual air streams can produce different chords based on the base tone. If you have twelve speeds and six air streams, you can make 767 different chords. The same rotor can turn the siren disk and a fan to move the air. You press the button, the disk spins, and a pre-programmed chord plays.
- tzs 9y agoAudio signals were how the first wireless TV remotes worked [1]: > In 1956, Robert Adler developed "Zenith Space Command", a wireless remote. It was mechanical and used ultrasound to change the channel and volume. When the user pushed a button on the remote control, it clicked and struck a bar, hence the term "clicker". Each bar emitted a different frequency and circuits in the television detected this sound. The invention of the transistor made possible cheaper electronic remotes that contained a piezoelectric crystal that was fed by an oscillating electric current at a frequency near or above the upper threshold of human hearing, though still audible to dogs. The receiver contained a microphone attached to a circuit that was tuned to the same frequency. Some problems with this method were that the receiver could be triggered accidentally by naturally occurring noises, and some people could hear the piercing ultrasonic signals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control#Television_remote_controls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control#Television_remo...
- teilo 9y ago"connect to WiFi" is not remotely accurate. It should be: "Reflect wifi signals in a predictable pattern." This technique, while impressive, requires custom hardware/software to detect and interpret (presumably via filtering and a fourier transform) the back-scatter signal.
- comboy 9y agoYup, only plastic is also misleading since they need some conductive antenna. It's still very interesting and impressive, but somebody please fix the title.
- teilo 9y agoThis is really just a form of passive radar. It's using ambient signals instead of an active beam, but the analysis techniques used are essentially equivalent. It's like stealth technology in reverse. You are intentionally creating a recognizable radar signature.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jackhack 9y agoAll this to replace a slip of paper (aka "shopping list"). We have gone barking mad.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoHa, your cell phone is sort of like that. All that to replace, just waiting until you get home to make the call. To be fair, this 3D trick also replaces remembering, driving, buying, restocking.
- icebraining 9y agodriving, buying, restocking How so? You can already order online. All this devices replaces is the clicks it takes to do that. A cellphone means you don't have to choose between receiving calls or going out. It's incomparable in its utility.
- iamnotlarry 9y ago"Without electronics" except for the computer devices that have to be dedicated to monitoring for the back-scatter created by the 3-D printed objects and translate it into something meaningful.
- worldsayshi 9y ago"Dedicated"? Can't the devices that is already nearby, like a router or your smartphone, query it when needed?
- whichfawkes 9y agoThey can't query it, they have to be listening when it broadcasts.
- worldsayshi 9y agoYeah ok I understand that it doesn't have a memory. But you can still sort of "query" the current state of a device that is always broadcasting, like a flow or speed sensor.
- regularfry 9y agoThe router's probably pinging beacon frames out several times a second anyway. There's a lot of 2.4GHz traffic a passive listener could use.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYou could presumably use existing devices for that, but it would require making a serious software change - in particular, you'd have to alter the radio driver to listen to and recognize backscattered signals (instead of rejecting them as noise).
- chrischen 9y agoI’d imagine with conductive filament and a cheap microprocessor or bluetooth radio you can so the same or much more.
- vorotato 9y agoyeah I was thinking they were powering a microcontroller via motion or ambient radio waves
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoIts called an RFID tag
- libertyEQ 9y agoWhich we technically call transponders, and while they do have EEPROM, they don't normally have CPUs.
- gipp 9y ago> Imagine a bottle of laundry detergent that can sense when you’re running low on soap — and automatically connect to the internet to place an order for more. Why. Why why why do all IoT-related articles always use awful consumer goods examples like this. Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. There are so many good ideas and existing uses of IoT tech outside of the consumer goods sector, and pretty much every application in the consumer goods sector is hot garbage, and consumers know it.
- wyager 9y agoDoesn’t stop them from buying it. Even if my tech-illiterate friends are vaguely aware that e.g. “smart TVs” are, in fact, dumb as shit, they still prefer them to simple TVs.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoIt's not like they have a choice. That's the magic of the consumer market - people don't buy what they really want, they choose from what's available. Companies are focusing on improving smart TVs instead of offering dumb ones, so if one wants e.g. a good, high-tech display, one usually has to accept the "smart" "features" that come with it.
- sweezyjeezy 9y ago> There are so many good ideas and existing uses of IoT tech Could you give some examples? I've yet to hear a single IoT thing I'd be willing to pay money for.
- candiodari 9y agoI find wifi lightbulbs very useful.
- Someone1234 9y agoUnfortunately a lot of people don't realise how useful until they actually try them. For example getting home and having the lights turn on that you'll need automatically. Before we had to navigate our way to the other side of a open plan room in the dark to find a light switch, now the motion sensor triggers the Hue bulb. Plus we have a dimmer without needing an electrician to install one, and can set other colors of light for the mood or to improve the atmosphere of a movie. You can get started with Philip's Hue for $50 (on Black Friday) and at that price point it is well worth it for a lot of benefits/circumstances.
- wonderous 9y agoAnyone that finds this interest should look at how “The Thing” (1945) worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) EDIT: Here are some diagrams of how it works: https://hackaday.com/2015/12/08/theremins-bug/ https://hackaday.com/2015/12/08/theremins-bug/
- mxuribe 9y agoI had heard of this, but didn't know its name, so never looked it up! Thanks for this link; very cool!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- malikNF 9y agoYou should submit this as a HN link, really interesting story. Thanks.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Tempest1981 9y ago2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15498685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15498685 11 previous submissions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=listening%20thing&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?query=listening%20thing&sort=byPopul... 5 more: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=theremin%20soviet https://hn.algolia.com/?query=theremin%20soviet
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- baybal2 9y agoDeceptive headline, please rename You renamed it, but it is still does not indicate that the thing does 0 actual wifi protocol communication.
- ataturk 9y agoWhy does every use case for this tech involve some stupid "my laundry detergent can order more by itself" bs? I don't need my laundry detergent to order more by itself for the same reason I don't have automatic bill payments turned on. It's not a legitimate use case as far as I am concerned.
- hathym 9y agoover-engineered stuff that does not really connect to anything! but needs a special device to permanently listen to signals from the 3d printed toy.
- worldsayshi 9y agoThis is a truly awesome technology. But ITT an abundance of nit-pickiness on how this isn't exactly what the title says it is or how it could be presented better. Yes, the nitpicks are correct. But wouldn't it be more inspiring to talk about how it could be used?
- btbuildem 9y agoIt's not that awesome. Miniature, WIFI-capable components with batteries that would last years already cost very, very little. This is a strange use of a low-tech approach, seems to fall under the "We can, but why would we?" category.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWe're talking about that too; in fact, there's more talk about the usage than nitpicking about the description. That said, to invent uses for a technology, one needs to understand what it does, and what it does not. Hence the nitpicking. This technology is functionally worse than regular RFIDs, but it's potentially dirt-cheap to manufacture. Saying it has anything to do with "Wi-Fi" or "connecting" is so deeply wrong that it heavily distorts one's understanding of its pros and cons.
- bpowah 9y agoSo my WiFi should easily be able to detect if my (all metal) garage door is open or closed? I would like this. I run dd-wrt. Is there an all-software solution to this? Or does this research rely on fairly specialized hardware? (sorry, didn't have time to read the whole article)
- icebraining 9y agoIt requires a custom 3D-printed "device" on the door, which would modulate the Wi-Fi waves being scattered around (by your router, laptop, etc) into a signal that would indicate "open" or "closed".
- helb 9y agoI think the point was that the large moving metal object (garage door) itself would mess with the signal enough to detect the state without any additional device…
- adrianN 9y agoYou could probably adapt this technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqqEYz38ens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqqEYz38ens to detect your garage door state.
- siegecraft 9y agoProbably, the first thing I thought about when I saw this was WiSee ("Whole-home gesture recognition using wireless signals"), which is also from UW: http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/ http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/
- jbb67 9y agoHow can this _possibly_ work? You can't make a connection to Wifi or implement any of the protocols that run over by passively reflecting some signals. All of them require some processing and two way communication. The article just makes no sense at all. It is 1st April?
- justusthane 9y agoIt's explained in the article, although the title is inaccurate. The 3D printed devices do not, themselves, connect to WiFi. The backscatter is picked up by a WiFi receiver which is connected to the WiFi. But if you're going to comment, why not take the time to understand the article instead?
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThey use of "Wi-Fi" is itself a lie. It's not using Wi-Fi anymore than it's using Bluetooth or Zigbee. It's scattering back EM frequencies that happen to include 2.4GHz, which is a standard frequency for most consumer-level wireless communication.
- jbb67 9y agoI read and understood the article fully thank you. Wifi does not work like that and this cannot possibly work.
- teraflop 9y ago"this cannot possibly work" -- are you claiming that the working prototype depicted in the video is a fraud? That's a very serious allegation.
- quirkot 9y agoImagine 50 years from now inheriting a vase from your deceased relative that has been an undetected malware portal for decades! How exciting!
- icebraining 9y agoHow can you hack something without software, electronics, and memory?
- jhiska 9y agoSince you worded that as a challenge... by maliciously modifying the CAD files that will be fed to the 3D printer. ...or by building an otherwise identical object that manipulates flaws in how the Wi-fi reads the signals and then replacing the original object with the malicious one.
- Vektorweg 9y agoZero security though.
- nvahalik 9y agoCurious to see the impact this would have on wifi performance. Wouldn't this cause all of the really fun stuff making WiFi fast (beamforming, channel hopping, etc.) a lot less effective? Would be curious to see more information. I imagine this would be really good for things like weather sensors or even security systems... but I have serious doubts of the efficacy of what they are doing.
- CNJ7654 9y agoI don't see this kind of thing getting popular. The signals these things are able to send can't be very complex, so imagine a neighborhood of people with smart detergent boxes, and one savvy kid who thinks it's hilarious to send a high power, active signal mimicking the detergent's. Suddenly everyone's got more detergent
- archibaldJ 9y agoAww I remembered seeing this being presented in Siggraph Asia this year. Cool to see it popping up on HN now!
- lakechfoma 9y agoInteresting tech but the consumer products example is broken to me because I don't want to be throwing out even more plastic.
- k__ 9y agoWhile rather impressive it sounds like a huge security problem to me. With machine learning someone could probably train models that know what you are doing in your home.
- sitkack 9y agoLook at the other 3d sensing systems using Wifi by the University of Washington. It already is possible to form 3d pictures using microwave backscatter from ambient emissions.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI imagine they could quite feasibly do the same with the light that leaks out of your windows. The level of security you seek is unattainable in practice.
- tinus_hn 9y agoCool idea, I'd like to see how much distortion this causes on the Wifi channels though. They are already overflowing.
- bsimpson 9y agoIt's a clever idea, but without a 1:1 connection between an object and a network, it seems too dumb to be useful. How is my WiFi network supposed to know that the interference in the signal came from my detergent bottle - not my neighbor's, and not from some other random object passing by? Do I have to do some sort of pairing every time I buy a new detergent brand to teach my network about it?
- jrowley 9y agoIf pairing became an issue, amazon could associate a new bottle with your account before they ship it to you, and automagically register the device with your router. As an added bonus you could get a real confirmation that the box arrived when it is delivered. This is a really interesting idea for IOT. I'm really excited by the possibilities it could open up.
- zzzeek 9y agoso, malware on my phone can fake these signals and order 200 gallons of laundry detergent for me?
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoNot sure at all how that would work. Can your phone generate arbitrary backscatter waveforms? I don't think it can.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoIf the malware could access and modify the radio driver then why not? Also, TX-capable SDRs are getting cheaper and cheaper :).
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoRadios are largely hardware in the TX component. Not a lot you can do but point them at data. I'm not sure ANY data pattern looks like backscatter?
- penagwin 9y agoOr the malware on your phone could... idk order 200 gallons of laundry through the amazon app on your phone? Seems a lot easier, I don't think the app requires authentication for purchases. Or malware could just say "Hey Alexa [insert other name here]" and order detergent (This has happened accidentally in commercials).
- zzzeek 9y ago> Or the malware on your phone could... idk order 200 gallons of laundry through the amazon app on your phone? Seems a lot easier, I don't think the app requires authentication for purchases. it was just an example. If arbitrary, easy to replicate signals without an authentication start to represent meaningful device input, then that means anything that can generate these signals (such as maybe your phone, or maybe someone with a transmitter sitting in your driveway) can spoof your intent. It's like if someone could come into your house and start typing on keyboards. and yes the example of speaking arbitrary voice commands to wake up alexas and google devices is a real problem too.
- baybal2 9y agoSo what it is: mechanically modulated, very low frequency, passive microwave transmitter. No wifi anywhere there
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JepZ 9y agoActually, I wonder how much those devices would interfere with the normal wifi, like "when the wind starts to move at higher speeds, my movie stops playing" ;-)
- sitkack 9y agoI am reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) This development will probably lead to a new combination of something like RFID, WiFi and electromagnetic power delivery (AM radio).
- ogre_magi 9y agoAs landfills pile up with wifi-reflecting garbage we will truly be realizing the dream of the IoS (Internet of Shit).
- XnoiVeX 9y agoIgnore the soap example and just focus on the underlying Wi-Fi backscatter technology. There are many applications in extreme low power or no power devices. Most are missing the point. More details here. http://iotwifi.cs.washington.edu/ http://iotwifi.cs.washington.edu/
- emilfihlman 9y ago>In first, 3-D printed objects connect to WiFi without electronics No.