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Low tech sometimes succeeds where high tech fails – as one ingenious company is proving.
Chirp sends data over sound, a burst of audio that usually sounds like a bird's tweet. It doesn't transmit much data – 50 bytes – but it turns out you don't need much bandwidth to bridge the gaps between the real world and the digital world.
Chirp has already been put to use, and unusually for a small company, boasts hundreds of millions of users. Spun out of research at UCL, Chirp first stepped into the public eye four years ago with a consumer app. But it recently switched to a B2B model – licensing the technology for use in all kinds of cases via a software development kit.
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Sound has obvious disadvantages. One is that it needs to deal with noise interference, which is everywhere. And in the open, the range is short: 10 to 20 feet. But the big advantage is easy to miss: the audio bursts are a one-to-many, multidirectional transmission. So Chirps can be used as a signal – say a trigger, or a wake up call – for millions of digital devices at once. It can be played at a stadium, for example.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @10:52AM
In my experience, ZX Spectrum loading was extremely robust (unlike ZX81 loading). Of course, games sometimes implemented their own loading mechanism (I guess mainly to get a higher data rate), which could be less reliable.
But then, it might just have been the quality of the recorder (it took quite some effort to find one that worked halfway reliably with the ZX81; of course that was then the same one I also used with the ZX Spectrum).
But yes, I still recall that characteristic sound pattern (that the ZX Spectrum also put on its speaker during loading). From that I also know that some games used their own method: The sound was distinguishably different (and at a higher pitch, thus my assumption that they did it for a higher data rate).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 11 2016, @01:17PM
In my experience, "X" loading was extremely robust (unlike "Y" loading).
In the late 70s to mid 80s home computer boom this was true for all values of X and Y. Lot of mythology and such.
Some systems did categorically beat others, IIRC the TRS-80 model 1 was both slower AND less reliable than the model 3, somehow.
Back in the old days things were simpler... 1 bit A/D "zero crossing detector" input circuitry meant an audio channel wide enough and quiet enough to fit 10 or so parallel 28.8K telephone modem signals barely worked at 600 baud, sometimes, for example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @02:35PM
When I wrote "extremely robust" I meant not just "much more robust than the ZX81", I meant "so robust that I don't remember it failing even a single time (for content that used the built-in method)."
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday November 11 2016, @09:47PM
The VIC-20. Oh lord the VIC-20, I loved my VIC but good lord did it take ages to load!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.