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Supermarket LED Lights Talk to Smartphone App

posted by martyb on Monday May 25 2015, @03:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the Aisle-B-Seeing-You dept.

n1 wrote with news of a report at the BBC:

French shoppers have become the first to experience a new LED lighting system that sends special offers and location data to their smartphones.

The technology was designed by Philips and has been installed at a Carrefour supermarket in Lille.

It transmits codes via light waves, which are undetectable to the eye but can be picked up by a phone camera.

The innovation offers an alternative to Bluetooth-based "beacons", which are being installed by many retailers.

[...]Carrefour is using the location data to trigger aisle-specific special offers. If users open a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards, this can be used to determine their location - accurate to up to 1m - and the direction they are facing.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday May 25 2015, @06:32PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday May 25 2015, @06:32PM (#187684) Homepage

    It transmits codes via light waves, which are undetectable to the eye but can be picked up by a phone camera.

    Any chance of a little more detail than this?

    I'd wildly guess it's flashing near-infra red light.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @06:48PM

    by VLM (445) on Monday May 25 2015, @06:48PM (#187691)

    There's a competing MUCH older system that sends an extremely low bit rate signal over fluorescent lights to shelf electronic price tags by snipping out a cycle here or there of AC. Obviously to avoid flicker and dimness complaints the baud rate has to be exceedingly slow, but timing 60 hz pulses isn't rocket surgery so you can embed a lot of data in the timing of occasional pulses. Say you made a scheme that did nothing on alternating seconds and pulsed one of 64 cycles in the next second thats 2 to the 6 bits every two seconds or "dozens of baud" more than fast enough to change shelf prices, probably not fast enough to spam customers. Anyway, yeah, a little pulsating white LED could do interesting things in theory. One problem is the camera isn't built for high bit rates.

    One amusing idea is combining the joke of QR codes with IR LED projectors... Thats almost too simple to imagine patenting.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 25 2015, @07:22PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday May 25 2015, @07:22PM (#187699) Journal

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi [wikipedia.org]

    Rather than infrared: "Visible light communications (VLC) works by switching bulbs on and off within nanoseconds,[6] which is too quickly to be noticed by the human eye. Although Li-Fi bulbs would have to be kept on to transmit data, the bulbs could be dimmed to the point that they were not visible to humans and yet still functional.[7] The light waves cannot penetrate walls which makes a much shorter range, though more secure from hacking, relative to Wi-Fi.[8][9] Direct line of sight isn't necessary for Li-Fi to transmit a signal; light reflected off the walls can achieve 70 Mbit/s."

    And:

    One part of VLC is modeled after communication protocols established by the IEEE 802 workgroup. However, the IEEE 802.15.7 standard is out-of-date, it fails to consider the latest technological developments in the field of optical wireless communications, specifically with the introduction of optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (O-OFDM) modulation methods which have been optimized for data rates, multiple-access and energy efficiency.[27] The introduction of O-OFDM means that a new drive for standardization of optical wireless communications is required.

    The first VLC smartphone prototype was presented at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from January 7–10 in 2014. The phone uses SunPartner's Wysips CONNECT, a technique that converts light waves into usable energy, making the phone capable of receiving and decoding signals without drawing on its battery.[29][30] A clear thin layer of crystal glass can be added to small screens like watches and smartphones that make them solar powered. Smartphones could gain 15% more battery life during a typical day. This first smartphones using this technology should arrive in 2015. This screen can also receive VLC signals as well as the smartphone camera.[31] The cost of these screens per smartphone is between $2 and $3, much cheaper than most new technology.[32]

    Philips lighting company has developed a VLC system for shoppers at stores. They have to download an app on their smartphone and then their smartphone works with the LEDs in the store. The LEDs can pinpoint where they are located in the store and give them corresponding coupons and information based on which aisle they are on and what they are looking at.

    I'm a little surprised that existing smartphone cameras can detect switching bulbs on the order of nanoseconds. They also say the positioning on the Phillips system is more accurate than "competing systems" and that supermarkets might save money over Bluetooth beacons because they are repurposing the lighting system.

    And what's this? The Phillips system uses 50% less energy... Is that because it's replacing CFLs with LEDs?

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @10:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @10:33PM (#187762)

    Of course K-Mart will use flashing blue LEDs.