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Scientists Send Text Message Using Vodka
- ColinWright 13y agoOther submissions of this story, although none have any discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6945800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6945800 (theverge.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6948140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6948140 (extremetech.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943036 (laptopmag.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942179 (sciencedaily.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939145 (plosone.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939133 (scienceagogo.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935903 (arstechnica.com)
- archgoon 13y agoThe actual study, which you have buried in that list of links, is actually quite nice. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0082935 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... They achieved about .3 bits per second. Components needed to replicate: * DuroBlast Electronic Spray * Arduino: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11021 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11021 Alcohol Sensors: * MQ-303a : http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/alcohol-sensor-mq303a-p-549.html http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/alcohol-sensor-mq303a-p-549... * MQ-3 : https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8880 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8880 * MR513 : http://www.cooking-hacks.com/mr513-alcohol-high-accuracy http://www.cooking-hacks.com/mr513-alcohol-high-accuracy So their setup is probably about $100
- plg 13y agoI would be more interested if they sent vodka using text message
- gmaslov 13y agoText messages are only the relatively boring first step in this kind of project. If these guys go on to implement IP/Vodka they can proudly follow in the footsteps of such hacks as RFC 1149 :-) "The network smells a little slow today"
- pavel_lishin 13y agoA rather linkbaity headline; I send text messages using vodka pretty often, and then I have to check to see what exactly I said in the morning. Interesting, though. Seems like a series of breezes could seriously impact the communication, though, making the whole robots-in-the-sewer system not work quite so well.
- shurcooL 13y agoPretty neat that I know the people in this article personally.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- drakaal 13y agoI think the Native Americans did the same thing with smoke. "Smoke" for 1, "no smoke" for zero. And they went way further than across the room.
- Houshalter 13y agoSort of, but they didn't smell the smoke signal, just look at it. It's cool that we can automate it too.
- drakaal 13y agoPoint a camera at the place where the smoke pit would be. Poof! Automation. As to smell, that was a stupid way to do it. We can detect levels of lots of different things. Instead of 1 or 0 over time it would have made a lot more sense to say Ok, I need to be able to encode 140 characters with 37 choices (alpha-numeric + Space). There is a humidity sensor, a Carbon monoxide sensor, an oxygen sensor, and a Carbon dioxide sensor. All are really cheap. If you a tube and 37 levels that you release water, carbon monoxide, oxygen, and carbon dioxide to. You now have the ability to send. 4 characters at a time. Since alcohol sensors are cheap, we can use that for "parity" so we know that the message was sent correctly.
- devb 13y agoSounds like they're shooting for an Ig Nobel prize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
- singular 13y agoI think it's worth exploring non-standard means of establishing networks no matter how ostensibly silly as they can come in extremely useful when e.g. governments try to restrict internet access in oppressive countries or natural disasters occur, etc. Though I'm not sure if this particular example is of much use ;-)
- downer87 13y agoSo what's the baud rate? I might guess something like one bit, every 10 seconds?
- robotfelix 13y agoGiven huge number of possible molecules and the relatively slow nature of wafting them around the room, I suspect they plan to pack a lot more that 1 bit of information in each molecule!