by Jay Garrett on November 17, 2009
The Wiltshire town of Swindon has another claim to fame – other than being the birthplace of Diana Dors (hence the photo).
Swindon is also now to be crowned as the UK’s first Wi-Fi town – this means offering ‘free’ public Wi-Fi to all 186,000 residents.
By April 2010 the Wi-Fi “Signal” service will be in place and residents wont have to pay a penny for line rental or connection.
The deal is that peeping at low-bandwidth sites is free but users will be able to pay for a 20Mb upgrade. This fee would be “significantly less” than current broadband suppliers, scheme bosses estimate.
Downloading music files or streaming TV shows from iPlayer will inevitably cost extra, which will go some way to paying for the £1 million network which will be run by Digital City UK Ltd, in which Swindon Borough Council has a 35% share.
Over 1,400 Wi-Fi hot-spots will be erected, with work beginning in early December with the “Wi-Fi mesh” being completed by April next year.
Primarily aimed at residents, the Wi-Fi will also be available to visitors, albeit at a pay as you go price.
by Jay Garrett on October 2, 2009
Perhaps that headline is a tad strong but you clicked and are reading
Really though; researchers at the University of Utah have actually developed a way to use wireless signals to detect movement through solid walls and doors!
This comes to being from what’s called variance-based radio tomographic imaging.
The clever-clogs process signals from a 34-node IEEE 802.15.4 wireless network which happens to be the protocol for personal area networks used by home automation systems such as ZigBee.
The idea is fairly straightforward believe it or not.
The signal strength at any point in a network is the sum of all the paths the radio waves can take to get to the receiver.
So – Any change in the volume of space through which the signals pass, for example caused by the movement of a person, makes the signal strength vary.
This means by “interrogating” this volume of space with many signals, picked up by multiple receivers you’re able to build up a picture of the movement within it.
Those researchers/voyeurs, call them what you will, were able to detect movement in a room to within a meter or so, which is pretty good.
Rest assured that they can’t see what you look like in the shower…………….. yet.