A Deep Look into NFC

Have you ever imagined walking into a store and paying with your Mobile Phone ... Science Fiction right?!! ... No not exactly. With the technology we have today we can do exactly that.
Let me dive into the boring stuff , NFC (Near Field Communication) is basically a short-ranged, wireless communication between two NFC enabled devices. It is used to transfer small amounts of Data.
NFC chip is present in most of the Smart Phone these days. It is present on the back of most Smart Phones, one can simply touch the back of the smart phone with the other device to use the service. It drains minimum power so you do not have to worry about getting a wall adapter before the end of the day.

Working

Just like Bluetooth and WiFi, NFC works on the principle of sending information over Radio Waves.  If you have seen a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Tags in action (Which you must have if you study at NUST SEECS), This is the same thing but the only difference between an RFID and NFC is that NFC is two-way connection Whereas, RFIDs are one-way connection. NFC uses the idea of Electromagnetic Induction (same as RFIDs) to transmit information. This means that the device receiving the information does not need to be powered at all. The receiving device or Passive Device is powered by the Electromagnetic Field of the Sending Device.

The Transmission Frequency for Data across NFC is 13.56 Mega Hertz & the data can be sent at either 106, 212 or 424 Kilo-bits per Second and a connection can be established by bringing the devices within 5 cm (2 inches).

Applications

Let me mention some of the Uses of NFC.

• Transactions: You can go to a store and pay using your Mobile Phone. Just keep an eye out for this symbol whenever you go out for shopping. The best part is that you do not have to keep track of the receipts. The receipts will automatically be saved onto your Mobile Phone. Some of the services are named as Android Pay, Apple Pay or Google Wallet etc.
• Data Transfer: What good is a Technology if you cannot transfer Data over it. using NFC you can transfer Data very quickly. You can share screens with your friends using NFC.
• Business Cards: With NFC you can have business cards which are actually smart. These Cards can take the swiper directly to your Online Resume or your Website.
• NFC Tags: Why do you call Smart Phones Smart if they cannot even turn your WiFi OFF & your Mobile Data ON when you step out of your house, well you can do that now using these tiny tags.These Tags can be customized by the user and they can do whatever you want when you touch them with your phone Now you do not have to remember to set up an alarm when you go to bed these tags will do that for you.
• Parking Meters: Who likes to carry coins with you all the time, now you can pay the parking meter with a simple touch.
• NFC Enabled Car Keys: As the name suggests, this is a type of car keys where you can unlock your car with just a tap.
• App Launching: Using NFC you can launch a particular app when you touch an NFC Tag. You can launch (Lets say) Google Maps whenever you put your phone in a Car Dock.

Some honorable mentions are NFC tourism Tags to get information about a place by simply taping our phone to the name-board of that palce, NFC in Art Galleries.

Future Scope

We will see a lot of NFC usage in future. Some of the usages might be:

• Paying for a movie from your home without entering any of your bank account details.
• Student/Employees Identity Cards
• NFC tags in Hospitals. to get the information about the patient when you touch the NFC Tag
• Accessing Public WiFi s using NFC 
• NFC Tags on Buy-able Stuff.
• NFC on Movies Posters

Sources

• Android Authority
• Wikipedia

Technology Can Now Give You SixthSense

Do you watch movies? Well, I do! Sometimes the science fiction in some movies makes me laugh (out loud) but now it doesn't... Those ambitious fictional scenes can pave way for some really amazing tech. You might have watched movies like The Island, The Matrix, and others with pretty awesome modern technology. MIT has made one of those imaginations a reality. MIT Media Lab's new invention is an awesome wearable gestural interface. It has mixed taste of Google Glass, Augmented Reality and many other hot technologies.

Photo Credit: Sam Ogden

'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. -Pranav Mistry

Using SixthSense, one can interact with real world using simple devices and do many amazing things like real-time quality check of products, take a picture and manage the files using only hand gestures with any screen. With SixthSense, every surface becomes a screen!

Technology

SixthSense is composed of:

1. A camera
2. A projector
3. A mirror
4. Colored caps
5. Mobile phone
6. A genius mind to combine these things

This beautiful mind is of Pranav Mistry, a student at MIT who is the person behind the SixthSense technology. SixthSense is associated with technologies like gesture recognition, image capturing, image processing and manipulation. And costs only $350!!!

Working

SixthSense uses the camera and the mirror to record gestures with the help of four colored caps. The user has to wear these colored caps on tips of his/her fingers to help the camera record the gestures more efficiently. The projector simple does its work by projecting the images on any surface, it may be a table, a wall or even a hand. Everything becomes a screen with this pocket projector. The user has to hang the camera and projector in his neck. All these components are interconnected using a mobile phone device, where the real magic happens! The camera captures the user's hand gestures and the colored caps. The software in mobile phone recognizes these gestures along with the distance and relative motion of colored caps to understand the command, performs the desired work and then the projector shows the result on the surface. All this happens in the blink of an eye but it took him eight long months to build this.

What It Can Accomplish

SixthSense has countless application and it is one of the crucial breakthroughs in the history of tech. Using mobile phone's internet access, SixthSense is capable of giving its user useful information about the object its camera detects. It can take a picture using hand gestures and can edit those pictures. It can help us make decisions like which dress to buy by using its intelligent feature of quality check which is supported by the internet. It can help book reading. Similarly, it can enable real-time news reading, a person can remain updated all the time by watching news right on his palm! SixthSense is also loaded with a bunch of smart gestures which are a specific command/input to the software. It's drawing panel can revolutionize augmented reality and artificial intelligence.
There is also an online guide available if you are interested in making it yourself. The instructure for making your own prototype can be found here.

Appreciation

Pranav Mistry is an MIT student and a technology innovator. His marvelous invention, SixthSense, has become an internet sensation. He has received many awards and adulation as a recognition to his efforts and his genius. His fabulous invention helped him win Popular Science Invention Award and Innovator Under 35 Award.

Sources:

• Pranav Mistry
• TED

Wireless Communication Saves Lives

Image Source: Active Post

Sit back and imagine, imagine a world without wireless technology.  It is like a nightmare, the mere thought of wires is just depressing. Wireless communication is technologies major contribution to mankind. Progress of wireless communication in this decade has been ground breaking. Such as the concepts of power from the air, car to car communication, internet with an incredible speed etc. The evolution of wireless signal has taken the world by astonishment as wireless communication enables us to transmit information over short distances (for example, a television’s remote control )  and over several thousands of kilometers (for instance radio signals ).

Top wireless technologies: (RANDOM ORDER)

• NFC (Near Field Communication): is a basic concept which make use of RFID tech (Radio Frequency Identification) to enable communication between two devices which are 5 cm apart. In this era there is no need to carry different cards and information on you such as debit or credit cards, simply,  NFC in phones can be used to pay bills. For this  careless generation NFC makes life easier . Here are some uses of NFC.
• 5G (Fifth generation mobile networks): We are so dependent on wireless technology that we need access to internet in every corner of the world. Presently, we are using 4g technology on our phones which is quite fast and accessible. Now, imagine a technology which is 10 times faster, a technology which would enable you to download huge files in no time. You won’t have to wait for anything! I know this will change our life and will make us more efficient.
• WIFI 802.11 ad: Samsung says it has a commercialized version of 60GHz WiFi (aka WiGig) that’s capable of 4.6Gbps, or 575 megabytes per second — about five times faster than current dual-stream 802.11ac devices, or fast enough to download a movie in a couple of seconds. 4.6Gbps is something unheard of this type of connection can change the way we look at the world. Check out more about wifi 802.11 ad here.

Importance of Wireless communication:

I am sure all of you have heard of the term Internet of things, this basically means a network of devices. This concept has numerous applications, but this would not have been possible without the aid of wireless communication. In order to get information from a device which is thousands of kilometers away, we need to connect it with wireless networks. Yeah most recent advances in technology are on the basis of wireless communication. Have you heard of POWER FROM THE AIR? NO? The University of Washington researchers  developed a technique. In which, radio signals are used to power up different devices and sensors. They even demonstrated Internet-connected temperature and motion sensors, and even a camera, powered that way. Basically, wireless signals are being used to power up different devices this is something astonishing and will lead up to  different advances in this sector which is just AMAZING!

Vehicle To Vehicle Communication

Image source: The richest

This type of situation can well be avoided with the aid of car to car communication.... called car-to-car or vehicle-to-vehicle communication, it lets cars broadcast their position, speed, steering-wheel position, brake status, and other data to other vehicles within a few hundred meters. The other cars can use such information to build a detailed picture of what’s unfolding around them, revealing trouble that even the most careful and alert driver, or the best sensor system, would miss or fail to anticipate. This type of technology make use of wireless communication to communicate with the nearby cars. Wireless communication can keep you safe!

Sources:

• Extreme Tech
• MIT Technological Review
• Technological Review