The second stop of our Imagine Cup Round 1 travels took us to Software Design entrant OneBeep from New Zealand, a team that have developed a wireless transmission method to broadcast data across large distances at a small cost. Though the name doesn't have much to do with the end result, OneBeep's slogan certainly makes a strong impression: "OneChild, OneLife, OneBeep".
The system itself utilises existing AM/FM radio transmission networks for the sharing of content, and in the case of the Imagine Cup, this content takes the form of educational material. Files are first selected with OneBeep Publisher, and are converted to a .wav format that can be sent over pre-existing infrastructure before being deconstructed, added to the OneBeep Library and sorted into categories automatically.
Team Leader Vinny Jeet elaborates on this process, "We divide the digital file into its binary form, and the binary is converted into a sound file. This means we can send any type of [file]. We've seen other similar things that send digital data over radio, but they've always had really expensive receivers. Ours is unique in that you don't need anything else in front of you"
The team demonstrated their technology with the simple broadcast of a small sentence of roughly 100 characters using standard 3.5mm headphone cable, a transmitter and a cheap radio, successfully moving a 290kb file. This seemingly high file size is due in part to checksum and data integrity information encoded into the broadcast. "There is always going to be noise in the background, but we have used half the bandwidth in the transmission for error correction."
Though the broadcast was demonstrated over a short distance of roughly two metres, the team have tested their method successfully over a distance of 400 kilometres. Bandwidth speeds are currently limited at 1.5kbps, and though AM has a maximum theoretical output of 6kbps with FM even higher at 9, reliability takes preference over sheer throughput.
As an added benefit of using radio Vinny proudly boasts, "We can send it to thousands of villagers at the same time." Transmission time for sending ten pages worth of text was said to take five minutes, and the computerised .wav version of the file sounds like a dial-up modem whirring away for 40 seconds.
The OneBeep software is built using C# and Visual Studio, and has plans to take advantage of cloud platform service Azure in the future. Sponsorship partners will cover subscription costs to Azure as surprisingly, OneBeep does not intend at this point to profit from their solution; "None of us want to make money out of this."
OneBeep have had some interest from companies even at this early stage, and OLPC's former President of Software and Content Walter Bender has said "This concept will allow OLPC deployments to piggy back on technology already in place." See more about OneBeep at their website.
Read on for Papapurê: Morg’s Adventures!
Issue: 137 | June, 2012