I'm working on a hardware device that will plug into the USB port of a mobile phone and transmit data from one phone to another at very high speeds. The data is being carried over visible light (so it would appear that you are plugging in an external flashlight to your phone, except that it's carrying data). Data transmission for the first prototype will be 10 Mbps, later prototypes will be able to reach 100 Mbps.
I think this opens up some interesting possibilities for new app development, since you are now providing a low latency, high speed connection between adjacent devices. The fact that the user will be able to see where the data is going also provides some potentially useful feedback. The immediately obvious apps are for things like fast file transfers (pushing a song from one phone to the next), gaming (imagine playing blackjack where a "dealer" points their phone at other phones and deals cards just as they would in real life), and mobile payments (light transfer is private).
I'd be interested to see if this is something the developer community would be interested in getting their hands on and what sort of applications come to mind.
Cheers!
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In short: Is it possible to cluster, network or push device output from one device to another, share storage devices and network/gps interfaces?
The long version: I have been wanting to build an in-car device that would store media and act as a gps and what not, but haven't found a way that I want to implement it yet. I was thinking if I found a x86 port of android, got most of the voice stuff working, I could have a headless device that I could store music on and use as navigation. I know the phones are capable of that, but if I want to keep say 500 gb of music on me, how does one do that?
My thoughts were if it were possible to either cluster or network an installed android powered unit to an android powered phone, I could always have network access from the unit in the car and share the gps from the phone, or have the phone access the storage from the device (not through dlna, but the music app seeing it as physical storage) and allow me to push the output from the in car device to the phone and let me interact with the system how ever I need to I could accomplish a form of in-car entertainment.
I figured that there could be apps written that would let the in-car device act as a headless unit, with its only interface being audio, it could store navigation directions/maps and what not, so if I didn't have the phone that day, I could still navigate to where I needed to. The phone and the device could constantly be in communication with each other if the car was parked by a wifi hotspot or something, so if I chose to navigate somewhere when I was at home, the car would already have the directions. I could also have it pull any media changes through wifi, and always have an updated media library.
I know the phones are fully capable of doing this, but for most of it, you have to have a window holster for the car to use the gps, and wires running for audio and charging and what not, but if there were a way that the in-car device could be hardwired to the audio system and left alone, the phone could stay in my pocked, be linked via bluetooth and I could have a small button-pad or something that would allow me to initiate google voice search, control the media player and interact with navigation. The whole thing with linking the phone and device together would be so the mobile network could be shared between android devices and the incar device could pull the information it needed. The thought of the display sharing was in case I needed to interact with the incar device.
I know what I am going on about is specific to me, but my thoughts behind it were if it were possible to do at least the network sharing (with out tethering or mobile hot spot blah blah blah) that android phone and tablet owners could do the same thing. They could share their mobile network through their tablet and have a tablet that would be always connected, would share mailboxes with the phone and basically act the way the Blackberry playbook is proposed or how the Palm Foleo was supposed to work. If the devices had a network ability of some level, the tablet could pull text messages, email messages, contacts or any other sync-able item.. That way, this wouldn't just be done for my benefit, but it would take tablet and phone owners to another league. Two devices that share the same information from one source and don't have to sync with the same servers twice. It would take a lot of redundancy out.
I hope you guys can see usefulness in my idea, and can shed some light for me.
Sorry from bringing this back from the dead, but since I never got any responses I'll add a bit more..
Does android have anything that would work like blackberry bridge between two android devices?
Droid Vnc server and androidvnc works fine for screen sharing. What I really like is the hpc aspects to CPU cycle sharing over wifi/nfc. Really interesting possibilities.
What I am looking for is to have the ability to use two separate android devices, but have them communicate via wifi/bluetooth or what ever and act as the same device in the sense that when the device with the data plan gets a text message or phone call, the notification goes through the other device that would be physically docked to audio equipment or what ever...
I have a Droid X, Droid Incredible, Droid Pro and a first gen Droid laying around.. Currently the Droid Pro is my in use phone.. The rest are just laying here. I want to be able to dock one of the others in my car, turn the GPS on, link it to my droid pro and have the other phone use the droid pro's active data connection for guidance/searches etc, and it would be docked to car audio, so it would need to access the pro's sd card, and have access to the pro's phone audio, or the ability to route calls from the pro to the other device via bluetooth or whatever, not by call forwarding.. This way it would be a sort of infotainment/telematics system..
Think of the possibilities this would open up for android tablets etc. If You could reply to text messages from your tablet because the tablet is linked/bridged to the phone in your pocket... That would make these tablet/laptop combos more appealing because it would the perfect convergence between tablet and phone.
Oh, and I guess, the other thing is that I have multiple cars, so one device would go in each car, and then when I got in the car, the one in that car would link with my phone, and everything would be the same, car to car, or device to device...
I guess another way to bump this:
Would it be possible for an app to do ADB to ADB via bluetooth or something, because then an app could be written like pdanet that would allow the network to be shared at least?
I dont remember the name of the app I think the name of it is Dashboard? and it will store/push all texts/emails etc. to every device u have dashboard installed on...Best buy has an app kinda like that too...Like the Idea of the screen sharing is that kinda like remote desktop/control?
I just search how to neywork cluster android came across your post ..... if you use the Google apps like Google play music/maps as well Google hangouts since with Google voice you can easily do what you want with out the need for both devices being together you can upload 50000 songs 9n play music for free and any device with ur hangouts and voice will receive ur calls and email notifications .....just need to make sure have Internet
Why do they bother to still design tablets with the CPU/GPU on board? When I think about the future of windows with windows 8 I think about tablets being heavier to run the x86 architecture and I wonder why not just use something like intels widi and transmit only the picture to a tablet and have a server plugged in doing all the processing, maybe even running another instance or switchable session of the OS attached to a standard desktop display/keyboard mouse. The tablet would of course still need a processor but only to process a ready to go image, audio and to interpret touch inputs and transmit them to the server. This would allow for larger batteries and be much more cost effective in the long run.
Of course we will still need today's style for outside the home/office but like the desktop there is still a market for the LAN only machines.
Maybe this is already available and someone can point me to where I can buy it now! :x
You want the cloud? Not ready yet. Until then, splashtop will have to do. Also, botnet.
jdeoxys said:
You want the cloud? Not ready yet. Until then, splashtop will have to do. Also, botnet.
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No, nothing over the internet. I'm simply talking about a wireless display with a battery but one that can transmit touch inputs. Not sure how else to put it but if you have seen the wireless transmitter and receivers for HDMI, similar to this.
Does anyone see where I'm going with this? Windows 8 is touch screen but the best I could find that are desktop-like is the dell ST2220T which only has 2 touch points that is not cetified for windows 8 which I believe accepts up to 4.
Next I looked at tablets and there are a few budget(if you can call $500 with a small display, bad/slow graphics card and little storage budget) that look promising but could easily have 100 hardware issues that would drive me nuts and then theres the name brand stuff like samsungs $1,000 pc tablets which still suffer from built in gpu's that suck.
My idea would simply be the cost of a screen and battery if you already own a desktop with say, intel widi (wireless display) and some sort of input receiver to receive the touch commands from the tablet display. The performance would be virtually unlimited!
Are you basically talking about a device that connects through your local network to a transmitting PC running an OS of your choosing? Sort of like a portable monitor that doubles as a touchscreen?
Constant wifi or similar connection would drain the battery as well. Also, that would require a whole separate computer to run the system itself (if you're doing it at home), or a fast, VERY low latency broadband connection to a cloud (so forget about the device being very cheap just because you have to somehow pay for the server-side as well). Otherwise you'd be struggling with laggy UI which is the exact opposite of what everyone wants.
So... not for a few more years... or decades
Tristanlogd said:
Are you basically talking about a device that connects through your local network to a transmitting PC running an OS of your choosing? Sort of like a portable monitor that doubles as a touchscreen?
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Like a portable monitor with touchscreen that transmits touch inputs/commands wirelessly back to the desktop just like a mouse.
I don't think transmitting through networks is a good idea and thats why I mentioned the Intel WIDI wireless display technology that is already in most new Inte'ls so all we would really need to change on the PC side is a customized wireless receiver for the touch inputs.
Hell, I'm thinking about calling a friend who is an EE and getting something made if nobody else is...lol.
aard said:
Constant wifi or similar connection would drain the battery as well. Also, that would require a whole separate computer to run the system itself (if you're doing it at home), or a fast, VERY low latency broadband connection to a cloud (so forget about the device being very cheap just because you have to somehow pay for the server-side as well). Otherwise you'd be struggling with laggy UI which is the exact opposite of what everyone wants.
So... not for a few more years... or decades
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Eh the technology is here with http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-wireless-display.html
Using wifi isn't efficient, but tablets use most of their energy on the display and processing. Since all you would be doing is signal processing vs actual computation @ the tablet end you would use considerably less juice. Like Half.
You are talking direct wireless connection from tablet to monitor, not going through a wireless router or connection? Interesting idea, but why not just go through a wireless connection? Wouldn't this also kind of tether you to your pc? Splashtop or Logmein allows you to do this anywhere.
Tristanlogd said:
You are talking direct wireless connection from tablet to monitor, not going through a wireless router or connection? Interesting idea, but why not just go through a wireless connection? Wouldn't this also kind of tether you to your pc? Splashtop or Logmein allows you to do this anywhere.
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All I'm talking about is a PC or laptop with a second display thats wireless. Then we call it a tablet because it has a touch screen that sends signals back to the PC or laptop to move the mouse or rather gestures. Not cloud computing, I have done this and it's terrible. Cloud is basically remote desktop which is choppy and worse then current tablets. What I'm talking about would make the performance increase as Intel claims virtually no latency with WIDI and even 5 milliseconds would be hard to notice considering how laggy android is as it's basically a virtual machine.
Hereis a clip I just found, not sure if it's available yet but:
Now ASUS brings another solution to the table, the WiCast, which can be connected to any computer and any television and promises latency-free 1080p video and audio.
After spending the last 3 months waiting patiently, I'm dismayed to hear that the Surface Pro won't have GPS. Does anyone know if there is a way Windows 8 could use the GPS signal of a Windows Phone 8 via wifi or bluetooth?
It seems ridiculous to me that I would buy a portable computer and then not be able to use accurate location based services, but I have no problem with the idea of tethering it to my phone for 4G services, so GPS could easily be the same. Similarly, the transfer of NFC data via a WP8 would be cool too.
foaf said:
After spending the last 3 months waiting patiently, I'm dismayed to hear that the Surface Pro won't have GPS. Does anyone know if there is a way Windows 8 could use the GPS signal of a Windows Phone 8 via wifi or bluetooth?
It seems ridiculous to me that I would buy a portable computer and then not be able to use accurate location based services, but I have no problem with the idea of tethering it to my phone for 4G services, so GPS could easily be the same. Similarly, the transfer of NFC data via a WP8 would be cool too.
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Sorry but it won't happen. GPS tethering requires the Bluetooth serial port profile which will not be available in the WP8 Bluetooth stack. I pre-ordered my Surface RT and bought a 3G+GPS usb stick for $28 for those rare occasions that I would need a giant navigation device
With WP8 now supporting the Object Push profile, you could transfer data through Bluetooth between each device. Though definitely not as cool as NFC.
It wouldn't be *too* hard to write a virtual GPS driver that takes data, perhaps in NMEA format or similar, over WiFi or other network transport. You could then write a smartphone app that would connect to the PC (Surface or otherwise) over the network and send the smartphone's GPS info. It would be hell on the phone's battery, but for short periods or if plugged in it would work fine.
Actually, I'd be somewhat surprised if such things don't already exist. There are certainly PC apps that handle GPS data over a network connection, and there are GPS drivers for x86/x64 Windows (including Win7, which means they will also work on Win8 including Surface Pro). Whether there yet exists such a "network GPS" driver, I can't say at this time, but it wouldn't be hard to write one.
Now, getting something like that on Surface RT, or any other Windows RT device... that would take some hacking. We do that here, of course, but it won't be nearly as easy; I can't imagine that Windows RT is going to be easygoing about loading third-party drivers (considering that it doesn't even want to run third-party executables).
GoodDayToDie said:
It wouldn't be *too* hard to write a virtual GPS driver that takes data, perhaps in NMEA format or similar, over WiFi or other network transport. You could then write a smartphone app that would connect to the PC (Surface or otherwise) over the network and send the smartphone's GPS info. It would be hell on the phone's battery, but for short periods or if plugged in it would work fine.
Actually, I'd be somewhat surprised if such things don't already exist. There are certainly PC apps that handle GPS data over a network connection, and there are GPS drivers for x86/x64 Windows (including Win7, which means they will also work on Win8 including Surface Pro). Whether there yet exists such a "network GPS" driver, I can't say at this time, but it wouldn't be hard to write one.
Now, getting something like that on Surface RT, or any other Windows RT device... that would take some hacking. We do that here, of course, but it won't be nearly as easy; I can't imagine that Windows RT is going to be easygoing about loading third-party drivers (considering that it doesn't even want to run third-party executables).
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But that would only work where there's wifi. Won't help much where there's no signal. I wouldn't be surprised if a bluetooth - external GPS option doesn't pop up down the road. I was also disappointed to hear that there was no GPS in the Surface, as so many tablet/Ipad apps utilize location data now, which the Surface will not be able to do.
I've been keeping my battery alive by using Battery Pro app but you have to monitor it 24/7. So I bought a couple of CHARGIE devices - a hardware controller that goes between the cord and charge block to turns charging on and off via an app.
My phone connected to the device only once during many tests. I've been trying various settings and suggestions by the company. They insist it will work with Android v6 so maybe the phone is the problem. Device requires bluetooth "ble" so I turned on full location options (GPS, Wi-fi, bluetooth, cellular networks). I turned on setting to display all ble devices - shows a printer from a neighbour's house but not a Chargie 2 feet away! Ideas or information welcome...
Bluetooth is required for basic communication with the Chargie device, but if your particular phone's Bluetooth doesn't work, you can use another phone to configure Hardware Limiter and use it on the 1st phone without the app. Location Access is unfortunately required by Android's device scan library. Chargie doesn't use it (no purpose). iOS doesn't request that, for example.
If that particular Chargie doesn't work at all, on any phone, please contact [email protected] and it will be replaced for free.
Thank you so much for the info. The Chargies work (I have 3), just not reliably or quickly. I can plug in my phone right beside the Chargie and the app says it isn't in "range". Or it continually says the BLUE Chargie isn't in range even when plugged into the RED one! I had all radios including GPS on during the testing but GPS isn't needed. Still not sure how Airplane mode with Bluetooth turned on affects it. BTW my Oneplus One has Bluetooth 4.0.
Getting the phone connected takes so long, it's hardly worth the time to figure out the "hardware limiter" option with a Windows laptop. Not much documentation on it. I certainly don't want to leave my phone beside the device while charging. I was getting some answers via email until I asked how to return the devices. I may have to just accept that the device works 'sometimes'.
So I'm not entirely sure if this question goes in this forum or not, but I need to get access to the data partition of a device to analyze its contents. The device is a Skylight picture frame running an RK3128 with an unknown Android OS (locked down, guessing version 5?). I'm interested in inspecting the device because it's happened to either pick up or was shipped with a nasty addon from China. I'm not sure how "common" this sort of business is from a picture frame, I know there was a thing with insecure picture frames before but this is my first actual find.
Basically, this picture frame seems to be monitoring network traffic of any user-connected network. It then reports randomly sized encrypted payloads back to several different adups servers on every initial connect and on a random schedule thereafter. This wouldn't really be that suspicious, except that it's scanning for and attempting to connect to any Wifi network with a weak password and an Internet connection in the background. It will connect to any SSID using any number of dumb/weak passwords, I'm guessing from an internal table. If it doesn't get an Internet connection within 30 seconds, it moves on to the next network. All the while, the Android UI just insists that there's no network connection possible although it can see networks (likely because something in the background has stolen the radio). Additionally, it scans and connects to any insecure Bluetooth devices nearby, but I don't have a way to intercept its communications currently.
Skylight support immediately played quiet when asked how to access their device to assess the malware and "are talking to our senior developers to figure out a fix". The "senior developers" (I'm sure in China) also denied any possibility of getting inside the storage of this. I'm suspicious that they may have knowingly shipped this with malware, or added it after the fact and I would like to prove it. I split the frame open since I was pretty sure it would just be a generic board like a Pi inside, possibly with serial pads or other development options. However, I don't know what I'm looking at or if it will meet my goals. There are OTG-DP and OTG-DM pads next to the Micro-USB port, a USB-A port, a 5v barrel connector and a large number of unmarked pads around what appears to be an expansion ribbon connector spot.