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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Supermarket LED Lights Talk to Smartphone App
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday May 25 2015, @04:12PM
"The Philips physics laboratory was scaled down in the early 21st century, as the company ceased trying to be innovative in consumer electronics through fundamental research."
Which pretty much sums things up. They've stopped being interested in solving real technical and engineering problems, and are more interested in solving non-problems using gimmicks. Hoorah!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 25 2015, @05:02PM
Nice catch. And, it looks like a good translation, as well.
For myself, I would think it far to creepy to have my telephone telling me which bottle of mayonnaise I should put in the cart. Or which package of chicken. Or whatever else. This is on a par with the Google Teddy Bear story.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 26 2015, @01:15AM
Anyone finding the Google teddy bear nice should watch Screamers [wikipedia.org] from 1995 .. ;-)
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday May 25 2015, @05:30PM
This sounds like it will be too easy, and too fun to resist 'playing games' with.
I can imagine all sorts of hilarity can be induced. (sending shoppers on wild goose chases, fake treasure hunts, etc.-it boggles the mind!)
Hell, it may even become a 'reality show', or 'go viral' on youtube.
*goes to make popcorn...giggling like a schoolboy*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @05:35PM
NFC, Near Field Communication.
Costs pennies compared to other tech.
But then again, you get a max 20cm range.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @05:43PM
If users open a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards
Cause, you know, I'm always doing that, especially while wandering around a food store. Every time I stop and place some apples in my cart, I can barely control myself from whipping out my phone and acting like the worlds biggest dork (or worse than usual anyway).
That's right up there with "The biggest problem in my life right now is I don't get enough spam while I'm shopping for spam in the spam aisle at the spam store on spam day"
Its like QR codes, which are basically unused by all humanity other than marketing departments.
I do anticipate something completely unwanted as a result... the only hope they have of survival is paying cell phone companies to include the app as a runs-all-the-time spamware that can't be removed or disabled. So they will. And then since we're in here running all the time and sniffing the camera output and probably GPS and god knows what else, may as well upload 24x7 data including maybe raw camera snaps to some marketing firm. Just what I always wanted! Thanks guys!
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday May 25 2015, @06:46PM
Cause, you know, I'm always doing that, especially while wandering around a food store. Every time I stop and place some apples in my cart, I can barely control myself from whipping out my phone and acting like the worlds biggest dork (or worse than usual anyway).
I do that all the time. I use Evernote for my shopping list. When I find 2-3 things I need to refresh my memory so I whip out my phone and look at the list again. I'm suspecting that even a camera pointing down-ish will still pick up the flickering lights.
That said, I won't be running this app either. Let me get my food and leave me the fark alone.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @07:03PM
I'm suspecting that even a camera pointing down-ish will still pick up the flickering lights.
Yeah maybe. That would sure be convenient so if it were even remotely possible for a marketdroid to claim it with a straight face, then they'd surely go with that rather than the weasel words in the article about having to wave at the ceiling. By observation I'd say about 20% of retail customers are playing with their phones at any instant. The dorky part would be waving it around at the ceiling for every purchase just in case there's a coupon.
On the bright side, WRT waving cameras around wildly, I anticipate lots more "creep shot" type stuff on the internet. "Are you taking a picture of my butt in my ridiculously skimpy outfit? I only want the cute guys working here to see me wiggle not every dork on the internet." "uh, very nice, but no, just trying to download a free e-coupon for preparation H from the ceiling. Hey baby, wanna see my app?" meanwhile furiously swiping to hide the clover/baconreader/camera and bring up the StoreSpam app or whatever it'll be called. I'm sure it won't be awkward at all, LOL.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday May 25 2015, @06:32PM
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.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @06:48PM
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
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:
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
Of course K-Mart will use flashing blue LEDs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @06:44PM
Oh yeah that will not be abused... /sarc
So I have to turn on my camera (using power). So it can reach across the internet (using my dataplan), to give me possible coupons.
So put a unique code on it and you can basically track people around the store to within a few feet (as GPS is garbage inside).
So any store that lets someone implement this is basically giving away its customer hot spot data and tracking data and the customer pays for it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 25 2015, @07:38PM
Press release [philips.com]:
50% energy savings, because you're replacing CFLs with LEDs. Surely there are cheaper LEDs with no Li-Fi [wikipedia.org] and need for managing data transfer and location analysis. No additional hardware investments? What do you do, beam in your coupon offers to the light fixture's onboard computer using another wireless technology (these are one-directional Li-Fi)?
Finally, the consumer's privacy is protected, except that yet another app is to be installed on their phones.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 26 2015, @01:21AM
Great technology for people with photo sensitive epilepsy..
Perhaps some of the will $$ue.
(because the average level of those light tend to flicker within a range that the brain can perceive, harmonic waves and all that)