LiFi as internet breakthrough, 100 times faster than Wi-Fi!

Sorry, Wi-Fi. We had some good times together. 

Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.

And now, scientists have taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialling it in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, reporting that they can achieve data transmission at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.

"We are doing a few pilot projects within different industries where we can utilise the VLC (visible light communication) technology," Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes UK. 

"Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communication is done through light. We are also doing a pilot project with a private client where we are setting up a Li-Fi network to access the Internet in their office space.”

Li-Fi was invented by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland back in 2011, when he demonstrated for the first time that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a cellular tower. Think back to that lab-based record of 224 gigabits per second - that's 18 movies of 1.5 GB each being downloaded every single second.

The technology uses Visible Light Communication (VLC), a medium that uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz). It works basically like an incredibly advanced form of Morse code - just like switching a torch on and off according to a certain pattern can relay a secret message, flicking an LED on and off at extreme speeds can be used to write and transmit things in binary code. 

And while you might be worried about how all that flickering in an office environment would drive you crazy, don’t worry - we’re talking LEDs that can be switched on and off at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye. 

The benefits of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi, other than potentially much faster speeds, is that because light cannot pass through walls, it makes it a whole lot more secure, and as Anthony Cuthbertson points out at IBTimes UK, this also means there's less interference between devices.

While Cuthbertson says Li-Fi will probably not completely replace Wi-Fi in the coming decades, the two technologies could be used together to achieve more efficient and secure networks.

Our homes, offices, and industry buildings have already been fitted with infrastructure to provide Wi-Fi, and ripping all of this out to replace it with Li-Fi technology isn’t particularly feasible, so the idea is to retrofit the devices we have right now to work with Li-Fi technology.

Research teams around the world are working on just that. Li-Fi experts reported for the The Conversation last month that Haas and his team have launched PureLiFi, a company that offers a plug-and-play application for secure wireless Internet access with a capacity of 11.5 MB per second, which is comparable to first generation Wi-Fi. And French tech company Oledcomm is in the process of installing its own Li-Fi technology in local hospitals.

If applications like these and the Velmenni trial in Estonia prove successful, we could achieve the dream outlined by Haas in his 2011 TED talk below - everyone gaining access to the Internet via LED light bulbs in their home.

"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas said. "In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future."

18-year-old’s life saved by Siri (Apple’s famous little artificial intelligence assistant)

Siri, Apple’s famous little artificial intelligence assistant, saved the life of an 18-year old in an incident 2 months back and turned out to be a life-saver(quite literally) for the poor teen.

Sam Ray, a resident of Murfressboro, Tennessee U.S, was tweaking with his truck which was held up by a jack when suddenly, the jack gave way and the truck fell over him. With no one near to call for help, Ray was stuck beneath the truck in shock. He tried to shimmy his way out but he was in a really bad shape, with his left arm above his head and the truck’s exhaust resting on his body (it caused some serious burns), but then comes the heroic Siri. While trying to move his body, he managed to somehow press the home screen button of his iPhone which was lying close by, and ended up activating Siri.

As soon as Sam Ray heard Siri’s voice, he started screaming, “Call 911!” and the genius little assistant managed to catch those words(on its fourth-fifth try from what Sam says) and then he kept on yelling loudly as the call was picked up. Eventually, the 911-emergency managed to track him, for which the credit again goes to iPhone. The law-enforcement agency tracked the phone and managed to save the teen’s life.

According to Sam, he was stuck beneath that truck for an excruciatingly painful 40 minutes and suffered some serious burns on his arms along with a bruised kidney, concussion, some broken ribs. He would have been in a critical condition had it not been for Siri, because according to the chief of trauma and surgical care at Vanderbilt University, Ray was incredibly lucky to be okay and recovering easily. He also mentioned that such injuries could be fatal.

From what he told WKRN, Ray was terrified to death after this ordeal,

‘It was kind of the realization that what in the world just happened! Oh my Gosh, this could be the end.’

Apple’s iOS has had a feature that lets you long press the home button from anywhere in iOS (including the lock screen) that launches Siri instantly, and this is what turned out to be a miracle in disguise for Sam Ray. Siri is Apple’s variant of an artificial intelligence assistant and comes built-in with every idevice these days. It is capable of doing quite a lot but apparently even Apple isn’t aware about its best feature: it saves lives!

AirConsole Is A Browser-Based Gaming Platform Where Your Smartphone Is The Controller

Gamers with a penchant for old school gaming have another platform to add to their entertainment mix: AirConsole is a recently launched browser-based games platform that re-purposes players’ smartphones as controllers.

There’s no need to download any games or apps — or indeed, hunt out your Nintendo 64 and remember where you left the controllers… For a local multiplayer gaming session AirConsole is super simple to use — you just go to AirConsole.com on your computer and smartphone, entering the link code that’s shown on the bigger screen on your smaller screen — et voila, your phone becomes the touch pad to control the goings-on on the other screen. Neat.

The number of games is pretty limited at this nascent stage, but the team behind AirConsole is currently running a competition for devs to port titles (they say any browser-based game or Unity3d game can be ported).

In the meanwhile titles include TicTac Boom, Hit Parade and PolyRacer. There’s also an NES emulator, plus card games such as poker and Cards Against Humanity.

Of course AirConsole is not going to entice pro gamers. But it’s not trying to; it’s squarely targeting the casual social gaming crowd. Add to which, it’s cross platform and cross device — so you don’t need specific hardware to get a gaming session up and running.

The platform has been bagging early attention on Reddit — where one of its game developers describes it thus:

…it doesn't need a lot of hardware: An average laptop will do. You won’t be able to play the newest AAA games with it, but that’s also not really what we’re all about. AirConsole is to play a few quick games with friends while having a beer. Think Mario Party. Except it’s really annoying to carry an N64 with 8 controllers (or a big gaming PC with 8 gamepads) somewhere, while AirConsole just needs a laptop or TV with a couple of smartphones, and you’re all good to play with as many people as you like.

Latency can be a slight issue with the link between computer and smartphone, depending on the device you’re using as a controller (AirConsole claims the experience is better using Android phones than iPhones — noting that devices that support WebRTC having latencies of between 1 and 10 milliseconds, while those without WebRTC support lag between 40 to 120 milliseconds). But given the old school gaming vibe it’s not necessary a big deal to have sporadic delays in gameplay.

N-Dream, the Zurich, Switzerland based startup behind AirConsole, started work on the concept back in January, with just under $1.4 million in initial capital — going on to launch the platform early last month (just before Apple took the wraps off its new Apple TV, which includes a touch-sensitive remote that doubles as a game controller).