LUCI Blog

We have decided to open up CONRAD, allowing you to post whatever pictures you'd like on the 3 displays near the elevator on the 5th floor of Bren Hall. CONRAD is a project focusing on many small displays around a building, allowing location relevant information to be displayed. There are currently 17 CONRAD displays up around the 5th floor of Bren Hall. We have several applications planned for the system, including the Navigation demo shown at the open house. This application - the image slide show - represents our first attempt at making the displays public.

The LUCI website now features some information about CONRAD, which is the name for the hacked up PSPs that have grown up around the 5th floor of Donald Bren Hall. Nick Noack is the lead graduate student for it. Click on the image to go there.

Oh, if only it were always summer and the research would flow like bubbles from a Woodbridge hot tub all the time:

The other cool experiment to occur this weekend was that after nearly wetting myself about T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home WiFi Cell phone announcement, I subscribed to the plan, got a new phone and wifi router for home, canceled my landline, and made my first WiFi phone call with T-Mobile's system. I think this is a fundamental shift in phone computing/communication that dwarfs the iPhone.

Using the hand-set I registered with UCI's network guardians so that the phone's MAC address was recognized on campus. Nearly instantly I was making unlimited calls everywhere on campus with much better reception that I had previously.

Several funny things happened. First I realized that I had gotten in the habit of walking toward windows when I was on my cell phone. Now, that's not the right thing to do with this phone. Second T-Mobile apparently has arranged that the phone will make unlimited WiFi calls from all T-Mobile Hotspots. So suddenly all Starbucks are also effectively cell phone towers. Futhermore, anytime I plug my laptop into a land line network I can turn it into a cell phone repeater by turning on Wi-Fi sharing. Which means that if I can get internet access internationally with my laptop, I can make unlimited calls to the U.S. with this phone and avoid the outrageous roaming fees.

In a lot of ways this is like Skype with SkypeIn and SkypeOut, but let's face it, it's a lot more convenient to use a cell phone to make calls and stay connected than a laptop. Futhermore, the cell phone gracefully transitions from cell to wifi and back again.

Okay, now the bad things. When I cancelled my home phone number, my DSL also got cancelled. T-Mobile assured me that this wouldn't happen, but it did. So I lost broadband at home in the process (hence why the experiment was going on on campus). I have a work order in with Speakeasy to set up a "One-Link" DSL line which cuts AT&T out of the picture. It costs $5.00 more than my previous broadband access, but it allows me to have DSL at home without any phone company involved.

Secondly, I haven't rigorously tested the hand-off from cell to wifi and back. Other reports suggest that wifi to cell is seamless and cell to wifi takes a minute or two. But in using the phone I never even noticed when it switched back and forth.

Finally, we haven't tested the Starbucks thing. It's just a matter of time of course, but fair disclosure/ buyer beware.

A certain faculty member here in the LUCI, hasn't stopped griping about how we aren't effectively utilizing two of our strategic Southern California resources: sun and traffic. Well this weekend, the first domino fell. I (Don) am happy to report that I successfully charged my PowerBook G4, a bluetooth GPS unit, and a Nokia N84 phone from the sun via a Brunton solar panel. It felt really ubiquitous because suddenly that nagging problem of power was *gone*.

YouTube video which disassembles the iPhone can be seen by clicking on the image to the left.

Alleged parts list:

1. No Intel inside. Samsung makes the core chip; its design is owned and licensed by ARM Holdings.
2. Intel does make the iPhone's 32-megabit flash memory.
3. I/O chip: Broadcom.
4. Power management: Texas Instruments, Linear Technology and Philips.
5. WiFi: Marvell.
6. Camera sensor: Micron.
7. Front-end power amplifier: Skyworks.
8. Display driver: National Semiconductor may be its supplier.
9. Touch screen: German manufacturer Balda. (9) Wireless components: Infineon, RF Micro Devices.
10. Orientation sensor: ST Microelectronics.

Portelligent research's David Carey estimates the cost of the iPhone's materials is about $200 for the 4-gigabyte version ($499) and $220 for the 8-gigabyte model ($599); his estimates exclude final assembly costs.

In the midst of the iPhone hype, which was largely about a decent user interface on a phone for a change, there was some other news about a decent infrastructure that didn't get nearly as much coverage. Unfortunately, the iPhone/AT&T partnership prevents integration with this technology any time soon which is too bad because it might end up being more important.

IPhone-Free Cellphone News - New York Times

"These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)"

The mash-up with this and Fonera is a little mind-bending.

Sam Kaufman, a current Informatics undergraduate will be joining the LUCI lab this summer as a SURF-IT scholar. He will be working with researchers (and being a researcher himself!) on the Nomatic (for presence) project. He will be developing our context aware instant messenger which we want to release this summer.

Introduce yourself if you see him around.