18 ms·

Internet of Plastic Things, No Batteries or Electronics Required

79 points by lazycrazyowl 6y ago

cm2187 6y ago
So now I will have to pair my bottle of detergent before I use it
driverdan 6y ago
The source has photos and better information: http://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/ http://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/
the__alchemist 6y ago
Would this process be cheaper than a tiny, low-power IC and small battery?
- waterheater 6y ago
  The battery is the problem. They're sourcing the energy from kinetic motion.
vsskanth 6y ago
Can you use smartphone wifi to do backscatter communication with the product at the software level or do you need some kind of custom firmware to achieve this ?
temrpoeeiwr 6y ago
This is awesome! Aliens should be definitely looking into this
naringas 6y ago
but how does it work? I imagine it requires sophisticated software on the receiving side? (and thus they can give away the 3D designs and still profit by selling the software?)
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Here's the Washington Uni CS department website about it: https://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/ https://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/
- avs733 6y ago
  if I am reading this correctly, and this is likely a simplification, -you build an RFID tag and embed it in a product -the tag is unreadable until a certain condition is met -once the condition is met, the tag becomes readable -a reader device (cell phone?) notices the new tag -using [some code] the readability of the tag is used to execute an action such as reordering a product
- convolvatron 6y ago
  they...are grad students who get a stipend from the university to TA classes and measure their success by number and quality of papers published?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- waterheater 6y ago
  They're further blurring the line we've created between hardware and software. The hardware captures energy and sends out a signal which can be interpreted by a computer. A key principle these groups leverage is backscatter (mentioned in the article). You send on a specific carrier wave frequency. The receiving device downshifts the frequency, storing the difference in frequency as energy. That harvested energy is used for computation, and a response is "reflected" back on a lower-frequency carrier wave frequency. SATURN [1] is one of the best examples of how "ubiquitous computing" may create new paradigms in computing though clever hardware engineering. [1] https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn
WorldPeas 6y ago
I think this is the beginning of the real iot revolution. previous iot solutions were either too expensive for what they did(I hate to invoke the name, but juicero is quite a potent example) or too complicated(also juicero)
- dougmwne 6y ago
  Funny. The other day I was wondering what ever happened to iot and all the hype. Then I realized that it is here and so ubiquitous that I stopped thinking about iot at all. Been in a Best Buy lately? Looked at Amazon's product line recently? There is WiFi and Bluetooth in almost everything now. And lots of people have dozens of devices in their homes from doorbells, scales, blood pressure monitors, speakers, coffee machines, door sensors, flood and freeze sensors and oh so many cameras. People love this stuff and it's not going away any time soon. If it was cheap enough, they'd put a screen on every last can of coke and show you personalized ads.
  - andai 6y ago
    Joked to a friend on the train that soon we won't have windows anymore, we'll have Windows, so instead of hills and fields we'll see an endless landscape of ads.
    - hyperdimension 6y ago
      Windows showing the hills and fields of the default Windows XP background, just with ads picture-in-picture on top. Oh what Brave New World!
- avs733 6y ago
  totally agree, I think 'IOT' had become somethign like 'blockchain' where it was used to describe many things because it was hip. As an analogy, this idea starts to look like the growth of internet retail post pets.com -> the nonsense is stripped away and the core idea becomes the revolution through simplification
  - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ebg13 6y ago
There appear to be two unrelated (and I can't tell if useless?) components to this. 1. Mechanical actuation generates transmission power. Ok, how is this better than RF induction given that you need to build an antenna into your object anyway? 2. Mechanical actuation changes transmission by tiny (fragile?) gears. This appears to be measuring the wrong thing in their demonstrative example. You don't care about how many times a detergent bottle cap has been twisted. You care about how much detergent is left in the bottle. All of their examples involve either no sensing or secondary sensing that would be best decoupled from mechanical actuation. A slider could be a super simple variable capacitor. A button requires no signal modification. Leak sensors are typically constructed by simply opening/closing a circuit by direct contact with the liquid. Fluid level sensing is only slightly more involved than leak sensing, and is best done directly, not based on estimated usage. > Gollakota suggested that e-commerce websites would like to know how a user might be interacting with the objects they sell Oh, great! > (after the user has given consent of course) Of course.
- Falling3 6y ago
  On your second point, the article seems to get some of the specifics wrong. There are links to both a video and the original paper that go into more (and better) detail. The detergent widget is actually a flow sensor to measure usage.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    I addressed that possibility in an edit. Flow sensing is a bad way to determine how much detergent is left in a bottle compared to actually sensing how much detergent is left. For one thing it forecloses refilling the container. Of course one of their primary stated motivations is e-commerce, so... Their geared rotational telegraph is cute and fun! It just doesn't look novel.
macjohnmcc 6y ago
yay more garbage for the landfills.
- bloomingeek 6y ago
  Exactly! Articles are now coming out claiming that less then 20% of all plastics have EVER been recycled! They've lied to all of us for years.
gumby 6y ago
Interesting: your washing machine, fridge etc would be servers to pick up these extremely low energy transmissions. What could possibly go wrong? I have always thought of IoT really ultimately being cheap electronics scattered in fields (for ag and gardening) and in buildings, somewhat self-organizing, requiring no sysadmining and ultimately becoming an e-waste. This is more promising, though plastic waste is no better than e-waste.
waterheater 6y ago
I know a bit about "ubiquitous computing", or ubicomp. Ubicomp researchers seek to blur the lines between hardware and software. Computations (as we typically view them) are modeled as mathematical functions. Typically, computer scientists implement these mathematical functions in software with code. Ubicomp people will certainly do that, but they're also trying to design hardware which performs computation as well. Significant amounts of work go into making ubicomp systems as energy efficient as possible. Inevitably, you design specialized hardware which doesn't operate under normal paradigms and does indeed appear to be magic. Take SATURN [1], for example. It's a microphone powered by ambient speech. Energy is harvested though triboelectric nanogenerators (TNGs). Or take Serpentine [2]. It's a special cord which contains TNGs. Interactions with the cord (pluck, twist, flick, etc.) can be uniquely identified in hardware simply by the generated waveform. There's also no power source here. The reason things like SATURN and Serpentine come off as magical is because energy-harvesting technologies are not the present standard. We expect to need a power source for our electronics. However, every real-world interaction imparts forces. With clever and efficient hardware, the energy imparted by these forces can be captured and utilized. That said, this new paradigm also introduces new challenges. How do you ensure one of these devices is off? You can't just unplug the power cable anymore. A possible solution is clearly delineating between the sensor and communication portion and placing a physical switch between these two elements. Since someone here mentioned privacy concerns, I'll just say that any privacy concern will need to be addressed at the hardware/physical level with ubicomp devices. [1] https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3290605.3300775 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3290605.3300775
- dougmwne 6y ago
  I greatly enjoy learning about this area of research, so thanks for your insights. There is something very sci-fi about it. My intuition also tells me that "off" doesn't naturally apply to unpowered devices and that the states are "active" or "asleep". I get the privacy concerns, though we are rapidly entering a world where that doesn't exist at all, so maybe it won't be relevant once these devices exit the lab. The walls have ears, indeed.

79 points by lazycrazyowl 6y ago

So now I will have to pair my bottle of detergent before I use it

The source has photos and better information: http://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/ http://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/

the__alchemist 6y ago

Would this process be cheaper than a tiny, low-power IC and small battery?

waterheater 6y ago
The battery is the problem. They're sourcing the energy from kinetic motion.

vsskanth 6y ago

Can you use smartphone wifi to do backscatter communication with the product at the software level or do you need some kind of custom firmware to achieve this ?

temrpoeeiwr 6y ago

This is awesome! Aliens should be definitely looking into this

naringas 6y ago

but how does it work? I imagine it requires sophisticated software on the receiving side? (and thus they can give away the 3D designs and still profit by selling the software?)

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Here's the Washington Uni CS department website about it: https://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/ https://printedwifi.cs.washington.edu/
avs733 6y ago
if I am reading this correctly, and this is likely a simplification, -you build an RFID tag and embed it in a product -the tag is unreadable until a certain condition is met -once the condition is met, the tag becomes readable -a reader device (cell phone?) notices the new tag -using [some code] the readability of the tag is used to execute an action such as reordering a product
convolvatron 6y ago
they...are grad students who get a stipend from the university to TA classes and measure their success by number and quality of papers published?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
waterheater 6y ago
They're further blurring the line we've created between hardware and software. The hardware captures energy and sends out a signal which can be interpreted by a computer. A key principle these groups leverage is backscatter (mentioned in the article). You send on a specific carrier wave frequency. The receiving device downshifts the frequency, storing the difference in frequency as energy. That harvested energy is used for computation, and a response is "reflected" back on a lower-frequency carrier wave frequency. SATURN [1] is one of the best examples of how "ubiquitous computing" may create new paradigms in computing though clever hardware engineering. [1] https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn

WorldPeas 6y ago

I think this is the beginning of the real iot revolution. previous iot solutions were either too expensive for what they did(I hate to invoke the name, but juicero is quite a potent example) or too complicated(also juicero)

dougmwne 6y ago
Funny. The other day I was wondering what ever happened to iot and all the hype. Then I realized that it is here and so ubiquitous that I stopped thinking about iot at all. Been in a Best Buy lately? Looked at Amazon's product line recently? There is WiFi and Bluetooth in almost everything now. And lots of people have dozens of devices in their homes from doorbells, scales, blood pressure monitors, speakers, coffee machines, door sensors, flood and freeze sensors and oh so many cameras. People love this stuff and it's not going away any time soon. If it was cheap enough, they'd put a screen on every last can of coke and show you personalized ads.
- andai 6y ago
  Joked to a friend on the train that soon we won't have windows anymore, we'll have Windows, so instead of hills and fields we'll see an endless landscape of ads.
  - hyperdimension 6y ago
    Windows showing the hills and fields of the default Windows XP background, just with ads picture-in-picture on top. Oh what Brave New World!
avs733 6y ago
totally agree, I think 'IOT' had become somethign like 'blockchain' where it was used to describe many things because it was hip. As an analogy, this idea starts to look like the growth of internet retail post pets.com -> the nonsense is stripped away and the core idea becomes the revolution through simplification
- 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ebg13 6y ago

There appear to be two unrelated (and I can't tell if useless?) components to this. 1. Mechanical actuation generates transmission power. Ok, how is this better than RF induction given that you need to build an antenna into your object anyway? 2. Mechanical actuation changes transmission by tiny (fragile?) gears. This appears to be measuring the wrong thing in their demonstrative example. You don't care about how many times a detergent bottle cap has been twisted. You care about how much detergent is left in the bottle. All of their examples involve either no sensing or secondary sensing that would be best decoupled from mechanical actuation. A slider could be a super simple variable capacitor. A button requires no signal modification. Leak sensors are typically constructed by simply opening/closing a circuit by direct contact with the liquid. Fluid level sensing is only slightly more involved than leak sensing, and is best done directly, not based on estimated usage. > Gollakota suggested that e-commerce websites would like to know how a user might be interacting with the objects they sell Oh, great! > (after the user has given consent of course) Of course.

Falling3 6y ago
On your second point, the article seems to get some of the specifics wrong. There are links to both a video and the original paper that go into more (and better) detail. The detergent widget is actually a flow sensor to measure usage.
- ebg13 6y ago
  I addressed that possibility in an edit. Flow sensing is a bad way to determine how much detergent is left in a bottle compared to actually sensing how much detergent is left. For one thing it forecloses refilling the container. Of course one of their primary stated motivations is e-commerce, so... Their geared rotational telegraph is cute and fun! It just doesn't look novel.

macjohnmcc 6y ago

yay more garbage for the landfills.

bloomingeek 6y ago
Exactly! Articles are now coming out claiming that less then 20% of all plastics have EVER been recycled! They've lied to all of us for years.

gumby 6y ago

Interesting: your washing machine, fridge etc would be servers to pick up these extremely low energy transmissions. What could possibly go wrong? I have always thought of IoT really ultimately being cheap electronics scattered in fields (for ag and gardening) and in buildings, somewhat self-organizing, requiring no sysadmining and ultimately becoming an e-waste. This is more promising, though plastic waste is no better than e-waste.

waterheater 6y ago

I know a bit about "ubiquitous computing", or ubicomp. Ubicomp researchers seek to blur the lines between hardware and software. Computations (as we typically view them) are modeled as mathematical functions. Typically, computer scientists implement these mathematical functions in software with code. Ubicomp people will certainly do that, but they're also trying to design hardware which performs computation as well. Significant amounts of work go into making ubicomp systems as energy efficient as possible. Inevitably, you design specialized hardware which doesn't operate under normal paradigms and does indeed appear to be magic. Take SATURN [1], for example. It's a microphone powered by ambient speech. Energy is harvested though triboelectric nanogenerators (TNGs). Or take Serpentine [2]. It's a special cord which contains TNGs. Interactions with the cord (pluck, twist, flick, etc.) can be uniquely identified in hardware simply by the generated waveform. There's also no power source here. The reason things like SATURN and Serpentine come off as magical is because energy-harvesting technologies are not the present standard. We expect to need a power source for our electronics. However, every real-world interaction imparts forces. With clever and efficient hardware, the energy imparted by these forces can be captured and utilized. That said, this new paradigm also introduces new challenges. How do you ensure one of these devices is off? You can't just unplug the power cable anymore. A possible solution is clearly delineating between the sensor and communication portion and placing a physical switch between these two elements. Since someone here mentioned privacy concerns, I'll just say that any privacy concern will need to be addressed at the hardware/physical level with ubicomp devices. [1] https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn https://www.sigmobile.org/grav/research-highlight/saturn [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3290605.3300775 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3290605.3300775

dougmwne 6y ago
I greatly enjoy learning about this area of research, so thanks for your insights. There is something very sci-fi about it. My intuition also tells me that "off" doesn't naturally apply to unpowered devices and that the states are "active" or "asleep". I get the privacy concerns, though we are rapidly entering a world where that doesn't exist at all, so maybe it won't be relevant once these devices exit the lab. The walls have ears, indeed.