5 ms·

Google had the radishes, Facebook had the gizmos, and this is just one of those. This is in addition to countless other things used over the years at both plac

Google had the radishes, Facebook had the gizmos, and this is just one of those. This is in addition to countless other things used over the years at both places. (Sheets of paper in clear holders, Android tablets rigged to do PoE, you name it.) The radishes were neat since they managed to do what they did from whatever power they could scrape from their solar cells. This is impressive when you consider they were indoors! They also had some 802.15 type thing going on, albeit with funky little boxes scattered throughout doing gateway work. I was disappointed when that project was discontinued before it got very far.

pmiller2 6y ago
> Android tablets rigged to do PoE.... From the other comments here, it looks like this thing is basically the equivalent of the iPads we have running Envoy outside every conference room at my company. We weren’t nearly so clever. Our setup just has an ordinary Lightning cable going to a plain old, standard-issue charger to keep it going.
- rachelbythebay 6y ago
  Yep. Important to note that this is Envoy the company, not Envoy the pink mustache factory thing used to let people do terrible things with HTTP. Random note: red teams <3 the networks used by "room tools" and the like. They usually have access to all kinds of tasty tasty data!
  - freeqaz 6y ago
    Lmao @ pink mustache factory. That slayed me. I was definitely uncertain if OP meant Envoy the service mesh or not. Was thinking, "has cloud infrastructure gone too far?" Thank you for clarifying!
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      It's even funnier because we also use the pink mustache factory tool at work, just not for scheduling meetings. I never thought to elaborate, because the meeting room management software is the one I interact with most. The other is mostly transparent to me as a lowly app backend engineer, and I'm glad for that.
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  I've heard more than once that tablets don't really cover the "running for hours, powered externally" use case very well (the constant charging/discharging leading to an exploding/expanding battery). Was this just the early models or is this still the case? I do wonder why there are so many commercial solutions for basically "a tablet, just a bit different".
  - wil421 6y ago
    Lots of places including Apple and Nordstrom use iPhone as a mobile checkout or scanning device. Lots of restaurants have iPads that just sit all day and are used as a POS. Personally I think an iPad outside a conference room is a waste of capability but it shouldn’t harm the device or be dangerous.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      iPad may be a waste of capability but there's no competition in the less-capable camp. Making less capable varieties is waste of design and manufacturing effort.
bilalhusain 6y ago
Radish sounds pretty fascinating. Any suggestions for a cheap Cholesteric LCD screen (which retains displayed image even when off)?
jhalstead 6y ago
I hadn't heard of radishes before, but I found [0], which has more information about what they are/were. There's even a demo video with the creator. [0] https://developers.google.com/gdata/articles/radish https://developers.google.com/gdata/articles/radish

pmiller2 6y ago

> Android tablets rigged to do PoE.... From the other comments here, it looks like this thing is basically the equivalent of the iPads we have running Envoy outside every conference room at my company. We weren’t nearly so clever. Our setup just has an ordinary Lightning cable going to a plain old, standard-issue charger to keep it going.

rachelbythebay 6y ago
Yep. Important to note that this is Envoy the company, not Envoy the pink mustache factory thing used to let people do terrible things with HTTP. Random note: red teams <3 the networks used by "room tools" and the like. They usually have access to all kinds of tasty tasty data!
- freeqaz 6y ago
  Lmao @ pink mustache factory. That slayed me. I was definitely uncertain if OP meant Envoy the service mesh or not. Was thinking, "has cloud infrastructure gone too far?" Thank you for clarifying!
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    It's even funnier because we also use the pink mustache factory tool at work, just not for scheduling meetings. I never thought to elaborate, because the meeting room management software is the one I interact with most. The other is mostly transparent to me as a lowly app backend engineer, and I'm glad for that.
ThePadawan 6y ago
I've heard more than once that tablets don't really cover the "running for hours, powered externally" use case very well (the constant charging/discharging leading to an exploding/expanding battery). Was this just the early models or is this still the case? I do wonder why there are so many commercial solutions for basically "a tablet, just a bit different".
- wil421 6y ago
  Lots of places including Apple and Nordstrom use iPhone as a mobile checkout or scanning device. Lots of restaurants have iPads that just sit all day and are used as a POS. Personally I think an iPad outside a conference room is a waste of capability but it shouldn’t harm the device or be dangerous.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    iPad may be a waste of capability but there's no competition in the less-capable camp. Making less capable varieties is waste of design and manufacturing effort.

bilalhusain 6y ago

Radish sounds pretty fascinating. Any suggestions for a cheap Cholesteric LCD screen (which retains displayed image even when off)?

jhalstead 6y ago

I hadn't heard of radishes before, but I found [0], which has more information about what they are/were. There's even a demo video with the creator. [0] https://developers.google.com/gdata/articles/radish https://developers.google.com/gdata/articles/radish