>
Canadians Are F**ked: Secret RCMP Report
Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000
Venezuelan TikTok Criminal FINALLY Gets Arrested By Ice
Inflation, Debt, and the Dollar's Fate: Peter Schiff's Economic Forecast
Scientists Close To Controlling All Genetic Material On Earth
Doodle to reality: World's 1st nuclear fusion-powered electric propulsion drive
Phase-change concrete melts snow and ice without salt or shovels
You Won't Want To Miss THIS During The Total Solar Eclipse (3D Eclipse Timeline And Viewing Tips
China Room Temperature Superconductor Researcher Had Experiments to Refute Critics
5 video games we wanna smell, now that it's kinda possible with GameScent
Unpowered cargo gliders on tow ropes promise 65% cheaper air freight
Wyoming A Finalist For Factory To Build Portable Micro-Nuclear Plants
High-Speed Railway Progresses Towards 200-mph Dallas-Houston Line
27 Ft-tall 3D-printed Structure Built by New Robot | ICON's Multi-Story Robotic Construction Sys
(Natural News) Turning an everyday object into a smart device is now as easy as slapping a metal tag on it. Capable of being produced by any 3D printer, the electronic tag hooks up the item to the Internet of Things, an article in Science Daily stated.
Dubbed "LiveTag," each unit is made up of substrate materials. The surface of the tag bears a 3D printed design made of copper foil that reflect WiFi signals from a router. When the user touches the tag, the reflected WiFi signals get disrupted. The interruption can be detected by a smartphone or similar WiFi receiver.
A LiveTag can be attached to anything. Its recipient is not required to be electronic; it could be a door or a wall or a bottle of water. An object tagged this way becomes a smart device that is connected to the Internet of Things. When it is being used, it will inform a watching WiFi device of the event. So you will know when someone, for example, is eating that tagged chocolate you explicitly forbade everyone else from touching. (Related: Terminator REBOOTING: Smart microchip can self-start and operate even when the battery runs out.)
3D printed tag can turn anything into a smart device
Furthermore, LiveTag can be printed as a slender keypad or a control panel for a smart home. When used this way, the tag can remotely control Internet of Things appliances through their WiFi connection.
"Our vision is to expand the Internet of Things to go beyond just connecting smartphones, smartwatches and other high-end devices," explained University of California San Diego (UCSD) researcher Xinyu Zhang, who wrote the research paper describing the new printable metal tag. "We're developing low-cost, battery-free, chipless, printable sensors that can include everyday objects as part of the Internet of Things."
Zhang explained that LiveTag is designed to reflect selected radio signals within the frequency range covered by WiFi. The signal can be altered by swapping out the copper for a different material and printing a new design on the substrate. Doing so allows the tag to reflect other signals, such as the ones given off by Bluetooth, cellular, and LTE emitters.