Device integration - are devices that merge any good?

[Paul_B]

Gadgets are merging functions into one device. Phones that play games, takes photographs and plays music. Cycle helmets that take your heart rate. Or ones that play music through bone connection while allowing you to take phones calls has a walkie-talkie function with other helmet wearers and alerts next of kin if you have an accident.

So do you think this works? Where does it work for you?

Phones obviously work (whether you choose it or not). I like the idea of that helmet (it does more using your phone GPS for tracking a route and creating a GPS file). I like cycling tech generally like GPS cycle computers. They can connect to various devices like power meters, hrm, cadence sensors and phones for notifications (like smart watches).

The key thing with a lot of these converging techniques is hardware gets made them software to fit it gets updated and developed afterwards. What Garmin does with their hardware has stepped up with strava integration for example.

Where will it go? Is there scope for convergence in outdoors kit? Walking GPS merging with cycling, running, mobile phones, smart watches, etc? Woodburners in camping use can charge phones. Where will it go? What do you like?

 

[Bishop]

IMHO.. no
In a Bushcraft or Survival environment the very idea of having multiple electronic devices combined into the same single point of failure is the stuff of nightmares.

For others of course the ability to live stream their helmet camera whilst tweeting GPS location and heart-rate to followers using a single device will be the greatest invention since sliced bread.

 

[crosslandkelly]

One day we'll all be "Wet Wired" into the web, no devices needed. Have you ever read William Gibson.

 

[snappingturtle]

I like that a compass points north and combined with a map is dam handy, a knife is the claw mother nature never gave you, and if you really must a phone with a camera is good, but so is a memory an the story you tell to pass it on, I guess gadgets are not my thing there fragile and need power and I don't get the need for a heart monitor, its pounding in your chest and I can count that's enough for me! Truly a phone will cover a lot, if you want to be all star trek about it.

 

[Bishop]

One day we'll all be "Wet Wired" into the web, no devices needed. Have you ever read William Gibson.

That Cyberpunk vision of the future is getting closer.

blood monitoring implant tells your smartphone when you’re about to have a heart attack

scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed the world’s smallest medical implant to monitor critical chemicals in the blood

 

[crosslandkelly]

Now that is interesting for medical cases.

 

[sunndog]

That Cyberpunk vision of the future is getting closer.

blood monitoring implant tells your smartphone when you’re about to have a heart attack

Can they make me one with a built in insulin dispenser? I'd buy that for a dollar!

 

[crosslandkelly]

Can they make me one with a built in insulin dispenser? I'd buy that for a dollar!

You may not need an implant.
https://blog.thediabetessite.com/bc...s-dbsaware_social_fb_link_bcg-vaccine-amazing

 

[snappingturtle]

Thinking more serious about it, a good phone covers it, you get GPS, compass, star maps, land maps with elevation, watch and torch plus emergency com's and locator and order fish an chip and pay for it! so the tech that is of use to me is here right now, just battery life is not so good and the tech is not as robust as I wont, as for the future well are we talking need or wont? things of use or frivolity? maybe we have to much of the latter already.

 

[crosslandkelly]

 

[snappingturtle]

Inseminated by yer phone! that's another form of tech integration I'll pass on thankyou! :***:

 

[sunndog]

You may not need an implant.
https://blog.thediabetessite.com/bc...s-dbsaware_social_fb_link_bcg-vaccine-amazing

Thanks for the link dude....but wake me up when one actually works
'They' seem to have one of these false hope stories running at all times unfortunately

 

[Jared]

Always though phone+walkie talkie would be a good combo, but never really seemed to happen. Outside from ordering a phone from overseas, though seems Runbo have UK distributor now I see.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Thanks for the link dude....but wake me up when one actually works
'They' seem to have one of these false hope stories running at all times unfortunately

Yeah, my mum was hearing about the magic cure all. Modern Snake oil?

 

[Paul_B]

Integration happens without powered devices. Correct me if I'm wrong but a baseplate compass has a needle to point the way, a scale to measure distance on the map and various other features. Once you'd have a round compass and to measure distance on a map say a scale or string with knots or something else.

A knife is a multi tool that integrates several functions.

A map is a work of art, navigation device, a record of social history, a record of land use, etc.

My point is low tech has integration in some form or another. Personal choice as to where in the journey of technology you get off is there. But it still doesn't mean you can't speculate on what could work, what you'd like to see and what do you think you'll see

 

[Macaroon]

I've had to integrate my tin-foil helmet with my coat-hanger aeriel, didn't seem to get anywhere with either of them on their own.

Post integration I'm getting all frequencies loud'n'clear

 

[sunndog]

Yeah, my mum was hearing about the magic cure all. Modern Snake oil?

Job creation i think mate. Imagine how much the americans will plow into diabetes 'cure' funding lol

 

[Bishop]

There's a bit of a standing joke in the Science Fiction community that scifi writers have already invented everything and we are just waiting for technology to catch up.

April this year saw the DxtER team win the Tricorder X-Prize to build an automatic non-invasive health diagnostics system, more details over at Wikipedia
Fans of Harry Harrison's DeathWorld series may remember the rather handy Vampire Medical Pack: Diagnosis and intravenous drug/antidote delivery in one easy to use idiot proof package. Just clamp to an arm and let it do its thing. Not quite there yet but auto-injector pens are available in various flavours such as Insulin, Adrenalin and Morphine.

Medically there's a few things that could conceivably be shoe-horned into a cell-phone size package such as cardiac and blood gas (SpO2) monitoring possibly even a defibrillator. Personally that would be a very desirable suite of features when coupled with it sending my GPS location to the air ambulance. Hand held ultrasonic AND X-ray scanners have also been available for a few years, though they are still shoebox size at the moment. Then again the early cell-phones were not exactly light or compact either. No ride in the ambulance then sitting in casualty for hours waiting to find out if it's a sprain or a stress fracture.

 

[Paul_B]

Not sure if it was an urban myth but ten years ago I read about how IIRC Sony stopped selling a camcorder with an IR filter / function for low light filming. Apparently in Japan (not sold elsewhere) it was found that when you used that function in bright daylight it had a kind of x-ray effect such that you could see through clothes. I believe a teenager found out about it and spread the story. Probably not true.

 

[Bishop]

<cough >>> cue Rowley Birkin impression >Ah yes 1998, I remember it well...parts of it..
Sony ccd-trv85 hi8 camcorder with 'nightshot'..(fancy name for an Infra Red filter) Not all obeyed the recall notice when the story broke.
Vaguely recall some Spanish lads got into trouble for having one as well. One owned a seaside swimsuit shop the other an adult website.
Then there was a bit of scandal at some Beijing diving competition in 2010 when all the officially issued swimwear was IR transparent.