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Designers at BorgCo have produced a prototype of a new generation of flash memory storage cards.
These devices are physically identical to standard cards, but have a Bluetooth module incorporated. They draw power from the host device to charge the internal Li-ion battery.
On first installation,
the user presses the pairing button on the card and bonds it with a Bluetooth-enabled PC, tablet or smartphone.
Subsequently, the paired device can read/write/delete data on the card via the FTP connection. While FTP is active, the card appears "Not Ready" to the host equipment.
Thus, wireless uploading of data from a basic digital camera is possible.
The memory capacity of the card isn't massive, as it's so easy to upload the stored data and then free up space. An app on a smartphone could be configured to do this automatically at intervals, or whenever the device becomes visible, and then upload the images to a web server.
CF has been selected as allowing the most real estate for the circuitry required.
Eye-Fi SD Cards
http://www.eye.fi/ [ytk, May 03 2012]
[link]
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Baked (see link). This has been available for years, in
SD form-
factor no less. It uses Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, but
otherwise is pretty much what you're describing here. |
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Even GPS has been available in an SD format (albeit with an
external antenna) for quite some time |
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That's why it says Bluetooth in the title. |
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This idea makes a nice prior art workaround. |
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I once thought, yo those USB drives should be like touch lamps, you touch it, it tells the OS to unmount the drive that very microsecond so you can just pull it. thats because I noticed that if you just yank the the thing weird stuff happens. |
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when I looked, I noticed Apple had patented the idea n it got some popular press, yet I haven't actually noticed they are available. |
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with the radio version, if the person does a sudden reboot, or the OS notices the system is unstable, it can prepare the drive, that way theres an absence of mess from a rush away effect. |
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Its different enough from the apple thing to be fresh. |
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I always just yank my flashdrive out. It has never caused a
problem. |
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Bluetooth isn't really the appropriate technology for this,
though. It's orders of magnitude slower than Wi-Fi, and is
less flexible in terms of infrastructure, with a considerably
shorter range. Where Bluetooth is really useful is in
connecting a "dumb" device like a headset to a single
smart device like a phone, utilizing a low-bandwidth link
to send streamed data over a personal area network. |
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What advantage does Bluetooth offer over Wi-Fi for
something like this? |
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Low cost; low power drain, low complexity; simple setup; small physical footprint. |
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And the same problem as all other flash-memory cards: limited number of write cycles (and shrinking as the storage magnitude increases). |
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And the same security problems as any other device accessed via the EM spectrum. |
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SSD HDDs have a lifespan of about 6 months, I have found. Very
annoying when you rely on them for a living. |
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Not sure why I'd want a slower, dodgier storage device than the
doggy USB sticks I already hate. |
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