Like many people,  I enjoy watching movie trailers.  This is because, perhaps obviously, it allows me to very quickly decide whether or not I shall bother to transport myself to the cinema and part with my hard earned cash.  Generally I make good judgements, but there are times when I watch the film and end up rather disappointed.  Recent disappointments have included the most recent of the Indiana Jones films, which rather unfortunately massacred a lot of very good memories from my childhood.  I loved the original trilogy, but despite retaining the original cast I think that the most recent film should not have been made.

But today, I have discovered a bit of a dilemma.  I have just watched a trailer, and it certainly makes me want to see the film.  But I am horribly concerned that if the film turns out to be rubbish, then it might ruin yet another load of very good childhood memories.  The film in question is the A-Team movie.

Now if you were born later than about 1985 then you probably won’t understand (nor indeed care) about this issue.   However, if like me you are male in his early thirties, then I might just be about to infect the same dilemma upon you.  So all I can say is “sorry”.

I have just three words of introduction for this post.   I WANT ONE!

Sadly, there are also three words to describe why I can’t have one.  CAN’T AFFORD IT.

Yes, much to my lasting regret I shall need to find the £3,500 to get my grubby paws on one, which sadly is not likely to happen any time soon.  Bugger.

http://www.yikebike.com/

I’m generally not a fan of flash-mobs, because in general I tend to find that they cause a lot of problems.  Rather sadly the events are often arranged by “organised” protest groups with the sole intent of voicing an utterly pathetic political message, but in reality they just cause unnecessary and unforgivable inconvenience to the general public.

However when it’s done properly, and when the aim of the exercise is simply to provide entertainment and happiness to the masses without causing anyone any problems, then I absolutely love it.  One of my favourite groups is the New York based team “Improv Everywhere“.  Some of their ideas are nothing short of strokes of genius, and I think that they are one of the best sources of public entertainment out there.  It also serves as a reminder to me, showing what a group of volunteers can do if they put their minds to it.

One of IE’s most recent missions was to create and perform a musical number in the café section of a shopping mall.  The result was just superb, and the looks on the faces of the crowd is fantastic.

Well OK, it’s not entirely pointless.  It’s actually quite thought provoking and really rather clever.

Geek Warning: This post contains subject matter of an extreme geeky and techie nature.  Persons with no interest in matters of advanced technology should look away now.  Symptoms displayed by affected persons may include yawning, glazing over, confused facial expressions, and a strange desire to hurl yourself off a cliff.

Still reading?  Oh you sad git.  OK, well you asked for it – we’ll start with a question.  What’s this …

Not sure?  You’ve probably got quite a few of them in your house right now.  It’s not a crystal ball, no, but in fairness I’ve been a bit unkind to you because although it looks quite big in the photo, it’s actually very small indeed.  Let’s zoom out a bit and try again …

Got it now?  Yes, it’s the Infra-Red (IR) emitter on the end of a remote control.  This one is for my TV as it happens, but you’ll find them adorning the end of most wireless remote controls in the world these days.  So why am I bothering to tell you about all of this drivel?  Well because the days of IR remotes are numbered, and they’ll probably be out of date faster than you might think.  The replacement, dear reader, is likely to be something called “RF4CE”, or “Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics” to use its full name.  Remote controls will no longer use Infra-Red signals, which are adversely affected by bright sunlight, and have a habit of being blocked by anything that gets in the way.  Instead they will use short range radio links, so that all of the usual interference problems will magically vanish and you won’t even have to point your remote in the right direction any more.

But there’s more to it than that.  RF4CE is really quite clever, and the best thing about it is that it’s bi-directional.  We’ll start simple, and if we stick with the example of the television for a minute it’ll give us the basis to explore some possibilities.  Using RF4CE, not only can the remote control to send commands to the TV, but the TV could also send data back to the remote.  “So what?” I hear you say.  Well imagine the possibilities!  You’re sitting on your sofa watching your TV, and you wonder what’s on another channel.  You pick up the remote control, and you browse through the TV viewing guide.  But not on the TV screen, no no, on the remote.  You could have a full graphics touch-screen on the remote which could provide you with all of the information that you require, and the information would be sent to the remote by the TV without interrupting the program that you were watching at the time.  So then you decide to change channel using the set of virtual buttons which have been displayed on the remote by the TV, and you find yourself watching David Attenborough talking about the latest cool creature that he’s discovered in the wild.  But what did he just say?  Did he really just suggest that you could look at your remote control and see lots of extra information about this fantastic new creature?  Surely not.  But intrigued, you glance down and sure enough your TV has sent a fact-sheet for the ‘weird-o-saurus’ to the remote control in your hand.  Wow!

Now here’s where things start to get seriously interesting.  The remote control in your hand isn’t necessarily the one that was supplied with the TV.  It could be the one for the CD player, or perhaps it was one of those One-4-All type of remotes that you bought because you got fed up with having seven of the damn things on your sofa.  The bi-directional data communication allows the appliance to send information to the remote, so when you bought your new TV you simply told your remote control to download the appropriate user interface from the TV, and from that point onwards you had a fully compatible remote control.  It’s a weird concept, but a very clever one.

It’s at this point that you realise that you ought to put the oven on for dinner, so once again you flick to the set of controls that were downloaded to the remote from your cooker, and select the temperature that you need.  Ahhh automation, isn’t it great?

Anyway, enough of the couch-potato possibilities – how is all of this possible?  Well for the ultra geeky amongst you I should explain that RF4CE uses something called IEEE 802.15.4.  Now if you’re really sad you might be saying “oh, you mean Zigbee.  Cool!”  For the slightly less nerdy reader I should perhaps explain that Zigbee is a short range wireless mesh RF communications protocol.  Were those just words?  Simpler still?  OK, it’s kind of like Bluetooth, but smarter.

Bluetooth has been in our lives for some years now, and it’s something that we all know and accept as a useful technology.  There are one or two limitations with Bluetooth though, and strangely enough they are the ones that Zigbee was designed to solve.  The first annoying limitation is that Bluetooth only allows a point-to-point link, meaning that you can only use devices in pairs, for example one Bluetooth headset with one phone.  OK, admittedly some headsets allow you to pair two phones, but the end result is often a bit ropey, and you can never actually use more than a pair of devices at any one time.  Zigbee allows each device to maintain a connection with a large number of other devices, all at the same time, and even in cases where the two devices in question would never actually need to talk to one another.  This may seem odd, but the reasons for this will become apparent in a few moments.

The second limitation with Bluetooth is that the rather limited range of the connection can be a bit of a nuisance.  If you move the two devices more than about 10 metres apart, frankly you’re really starting to push your luck.  Mesh networking is different because it allows the connection to hop from one device to another, rather than maintaining a point-to-point link.  So if you want to control the TV in a different room, the signal might actually be starting at the remote control in your lounge, bouncing off your microwave oven in the kitchen, then bouncing once again off your mobile phone which is sitting on the desk in the study, before being re-transmitted to the TV in the bedroom.  All of this happens in the blink of an eye, and you wouldn’t know any different.  Your microwave oven doesn’t have any clue what a TV is, of course.  It just receives the signal and passes it on to the next node in the mesh network.  The mesh of devices could actually extend over great distances if there were enough compatible bits of technology in between.  So you want to control the lights in your living room from your friend’s house in the next town?  Well theoretically you could, and the signal would be passed from device to device, using products belonging to other people along the way!  If you’re worried about security then relax, because the data in encrypted at the two end points and so it can’t be influenced by someone in the middle.

But even if we keep the example as down to earth as possible, a mesh network would realistically allow all of the appliances in your house to talk to one another.  Your TV could talk to your video recorder, telling it when to record your favourite programme.  Your alarm clock could talk to your kettle, telling it when you’d woken up and you might want a brew.  Your car could talk to your garage lights, telling them when you were home.  The list of possibilities are endless, and it all happens without any wires.

If this all sounds like technology for the next century then think again because it’s already here.  Zigbee mesh networks have been up and running for some years now (mainly used in toy projects by the geeky nerds), but the big manufacturers are just starting to catch on.  Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sony and Panasonic announced a co-operation in mid 2008, and in 2009 Sony released a TV which used this new technology in their remote controls.

So keep an eye on the world, because RF4CE is here and it’s very very cool!

Incidentally; if you are a complete nerd of the highest order and you want to play with Zigbee for your own geeky projects, then I can recommend the “XBee” series of modules.  They’re available from many on-line stores, including here, here, and here.