Fraunhofer develops extra-small 1Gbps infrared transceiver, recalls our PDA glory days

Fraunhofer develops extrasmall 1Gbps infrared transceiver, recalls our PDA glory days

Our 1997-era selves would die with envy right about now. Fraunhofer has developed a new generation of infrared transceiver that can transfer data at 1Gbps, or well above anything that our vintage PDAs could manage. While the speed is nothing new by itself -- we saw such rates in 2010 Penn State experiments -- it's the size that makes the difference. The laser diode and processing are efficient enough to fit into a small module whose transceiver is as large as a "child's fingernail." In theory, the advancement makes infrared once more viable for mobile device syncing, with room to grow: even the current technology can scale to 3Gbps, lead researcher Frank Deicke says, and it might jump to 10Gbps with enough work. Along with the usual refinements, most of the challenge in getting production hardware rests in persuading the Infrared Data Association to adopt Deicke's work as a standard. If that ever comes to pass, we may just break out our PalmPilot's infrared adapter to try it for old time's sake.

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Fraunhofer develops extra-small 1Gbps infrared transceiver, recalls our PDA glory days originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 01:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bioshock custom rig is Big Daddy of pinball machines, gives players a taste of Rapture

Bioshock custom rig is Big Daddy of pinball machines, gives players a taste of Rapture

If you're going to revisit a certain underwater dystopia, you might as well have a ball. At least that's the approach being taken by Sweden-based DIYer rasmadrak, who has decided to build a Bioshock-themed custom pinball machine just for kicks. The project is filled with lots of neat little touches from Rapture, including Little Sister vents and a few Big Daddy homages. The builder also does a pretty good job of drilling into the details and providing insight on the creation process -- like the challenge in using two different systems such as Arduino and chipKIT together, for example -- via detailed posts in the Poor Man's Pinball! blog. The project proved to be a pleasant shock to the system for fellow pinball aficionado Ben Heck, who gave the project a sprinkling of Heckendorn love via Twitter. Pinball geeks can also follow the saga, so to speak, by checking out the source link below.

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Bioshock custom rig is Big Daddy of pinball machines, gives players a taste of Rapture originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 23:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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