Remote Entry Key Fob Meets Cell Phone

In reality remote entry key fobs for car do not save all that much time. However, people use cars enough that they seem like a great convinience and luxery. However, they are not perfect.

The first problem is the space they take. In a multi-car household their size can make it difficult to have the 'keys' to every car on your key chain. The other problem that I have observed stems with how people use them. If the driver is slow with taking out his keys and unlocking the door, passangers may need to wait for the door to be unlocked. While this is not a huge inconvinience it can be anoying.

There is a solution to both these problems.

If cars were designed to unlock their doors in the presscence of a coded bluetooth signal, your cellphone could be used to enter your car (bluetooth is the type of wireless signal that cellphones use to communicate with headsets). Infact if the car was equiped with a keyless ignition system (as many luxery cars are) the cellphone could also turn on the car. All of the sudden you don't need any keys for your car.

There would be nothing preventing a single cellphone from having the codes for multiple cars. In a multi-car household with multiple drivers, there would be no need to make multiple copies of multiple keys so that everyoen would have a set. It would be as simple as punching the codes into everyone's cellphone. Right here, money is being saved. There would be no cost to enter the code into multiple cellphones. The process could even be 'automated' just requiring the press of a 'pairing' button, just like with bluetooth headsets.

This also could solve the second issue I mentioned. Since the 'clicker' has been replaced with the cellphone which has a rechargable battery, it's ok if it is running all the time. The cellphone could automatically send a 'lock' signal as you walk away from the car and could automatically unlock the door when you got near. There would be no need to wait for the driver to take out and press the button. As long as the driver was within range (likely 10-15 feet based on bluetooth specifications). This continuous transmision method would cause the cellphone to eat through its battery faster; bluetooth consume power. But this feature could be made optional.

As far as security, there would be no reason why it would be any less safe. The methods used to prevent people from currently 'capturing' your key fobs security code work just as well with a cellphone (click here is you are interested in why your keyfob won't likely open up anyone elses car http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote-entry2.htm).

This idea is also provides a perfect way to apply an earlier idea of mine. Some time ago I mentioned the posibility of 'Car Logins' (http://dailyinnovention.blogspot.com/2010/06/car-logins.html). Basically the idea was to allow the car to remeber the seat positions, radio presets, and mirror positions of individual drivers. These prefrences could easily be stored in the cellphone.

This would not require people to have cellphones with special hardware. All it would require would be a software download. Also, many cars allready have bluetooth hardware installed to facilitate handsfree phone calls. It should be obvious that this would be easy for car manufactures to impliment.

The only real problem I see with this idea is the eventuality of having a dead cellphone battery. If someone replaced all of their keys with their phone they could be locked out of their car. This could be mitigated by including a small secondary battery (like those used in key fobs currently) with the sole purpose of unlocking car doors when the main battery is dead. Of course if cellphones had preemptive low battery warnings as I discussed yesterday, this wouldn't be a problem.

All in all, I would love to not worry about keys. Being able to opperate multiple cellphones as long as I had my cellphone on my person is something that I would definetly be willing to pay for, and I suspect, is somethign that many others would pay for as well. Combined that with 'car logins' and people are looking at a great increase in convinience. Even at a modest price, being able to avoid copying keys could still save money. And as for the auto industry? It wouldn't cost them much more in the manufacturing process, and they could definaetly market it to cell new cars.

Preemptive Low Battery Alerts

Most cell phones will warn you when the battery is low. This can range from beeps and chirps to blinking lights. However, what happens if your battery does not reach the low state until you need it. These warnings are a lot less useful than they could be because they do not give you any warning until the battery is already low.

This ends up being a problem in numerous different ways. Perhaps when you head to bed your battery is 'charged,' and thus your phone does not provide any warning. But that charge may not be enough to last the eight hours until you wake up. By the time you get up, the battery may all ready be dead (thus your phone won't be able to give any low battery warnings). You then might not realize the state of your battery until you grab your phone to head to work. By that point it is too late to charge your phone before your commute.

What would be far more useful is a low battery alert that lets you know that your battery will be low before it is actually low. This way you have time to charge it.

For those on a regular schedule, there could be the options to enter in when they go to bed and when they wake up into the phone settings. If when you go to sleep the phone predicts that the battery will be low by the time you wake up, it could give you a warning so that you can let your phone charge overnight.

Phone software could allow users to enter in periods of time in which they would be unable to charge the phone. If it thinks its battery will run low during these time periods (based on idle power usage), it can preemptively warn you.

If people wanted to avoid their phone constantly beeping the early warning system could be based only on a warning light. The light could shift between yellow, orange, and red.

The really nice thing about this idea is the ease of implementation. In most modern cellphones all it would take is a simple software update to add in this feature.

As it is, low battery warnings are frequently of little use. If you are not at home, or soon will not be at home, such that there is no time to charge the phone, then all the warning does it let you know you will not have the use of your phone. The roll battery indicators should play is to allow you to preemptively charge your phone before its a problem. They don't yet do this, but they easily could.

Bluetooth Enabled Hearing Aid

From people that I know who use hearing aids, I have heard that using phones can be a problem. Apparently in many instances hearing aids are unable to pick up the sound of the phone really well.

One of the reasons that phones can have trouble with hearing aids is because the hearing aid is converting the sound a second time. It is a bit akin to trying to listen to a phone where on the other end the phone is set next to another phone and the sound is coming from that other phone.

However, there is no reason that second step of audio transmission can not be skipped.

I do think that there is a solution. Many people now use Bluetooth headsets while on the phone. In addition to being more convenient than wired headsets, the sound is often clearer than talking on the phone regularly. It is definitely in the realm of possibility for a to feed audio directly to a Bluetooth enabled hearing aid. This would allow for a step where the sound can be garbled to be skipped.

This could work with either a cellphone or specially equipped home phones.

This idea could greatly improve the ability of some individuals to talk on the phone. However, one issue is the 'target' demographic. This solution could require some 'complicated' setup. Bluetooth devices do not automatically pair up and require a bit of configuration. Unfortunately, many of those in the target demographic with weak hearing tend to be uncomfortable with complicated technology.

However, this hurdle is nothing that a focus on user friendly design could not handle.

Extended Museum Exhibits

As time goes on more and more people have 'smartphones,' or at least phones with abilities traditionally attributed to smart phones.

While some organizations have begun to take advantage of this fact, many more have not. I will be discussing some ways in which the capabilities of modern phones can enhance old entertainments such as a museum.

There are several ways in which this idea could work. On its most simplest level an art museum, for example, could release a phone app for their museum. While wandering through the museum the phone could figure out what exhibits you are looking at. This could be done in any number of ways including RFIDs, WiFi, bar code scanning, or even image recognition of the exhibit itself.

The app would then pull up additional information about the exhibit, or information related to it. I know I have been in situations at museums where I wish I had had more knowledge at my fingertips beyond what was provided by the signs and placards in the museum. In our theoretical art museum the app could allow you to bring up a bio of the artist, find the location of 'related' paintings, or perhaps see pictures of other paintings by the artist not on display.

Depending on how the exhibit identified itself, this information could either be transmitted from the exhibit itself, or more likely from central server that the app would reference.

Other 'museum like' locations could take advantage of this. A zoo for instance is a prime candidate. The app could pull up all sorts of additional information on the animals on display. It could even mention the 'personal' histories of these animals for those who were interested: when they were acquired by the zoo or born for example. If the zoo had cameras in the animal's pen, perhaps people could then watch the video feed on their phone.

Now, much of this could be accomplished with signs. But it seems to me, the more signs and more text at any given exhibit the less of it will be read on average. This would provide additional information to those who desired it. It is very similar to renting a set of headphones to listen to an audio tour at a museum. In fact, I see this idea as a natural evolution of those audio cassette tours. It would not even be unreasonable for a museum to charge for this app. 

In addition to providing additional information the system could be interactive. The app, in its settings, could perhaps allow for an 'age' preference. This could allow for content to be better targeted to demographics. It would make it easier to create an exhibit that would be both 'kid friendly' while interesting to adults. 

I mentioned earlier that there were several ways that this could be implemented. Now, each museum could make their own custom apps, but this would be inefficient. A great opening for a new product would be for a single company to make such an app (and hardware to be installed at exhibits) and market it to museums. The product could be called something like "Museum Plus."

A unified system used by multiple museums would reduce deployment costs. It would also be better for the end user, as they would only ever need to obtain and learn how to use one app rather than a different one for every museum they attend. I feel the potential profit in marketing such a system worldwide could be quite impressive.

While this idea will not revolutionize anyone's life, it is these incremental steps forward that marks mankind's progress towards  fully integrating technology into out daily existence.

Restaurant Wait App

After thinking about my last idea for a bit I came to a conclusion. While it would be useful and some places would be honest, there needs to be accountability or else many places will simply fudge the wait times as they do now.

There is a fairly straightforward solution, an iphone or google droid app.

When a restaurant quotes a wait time, the user boots the app and enters in the quoted time. The user then presses another button when they are finally seated. Based on GPS coordinates the phone will try to identify the restaurant and suggest the location, but if it is wrong the user can enter it in manually.

This information would be uploaded to a website and restaurants would be ranked by not only their actual wait time, but also their honesty.

There is also sorts of ways the information could be displayed for users. It could show break downs based on time and day. It could also rank the restaurant with the times normalized by different metrics.

If a particular restaurant is all ready in the database, the average wait and honesty score of a restaurant would come up when the user starts the app.

While it would still be possible for restaurants to manipulate the data, it would be much more difficult and they could not simply 'lie.'

The app could even support comments and reviews of places along with average price per person in order to be a complete solution.

If people used this app, less than honest restaurants might begin to see customers turning away from their door. This method of accountability could encourage honesty with wait times and allow the method I outlined the other day to work to its full potential.

Orientation Dependent Ringtone

As I mentioned yesterday I had a different Idea on dealing with the problem of cell phone ringers.

I’ve split this into a second post because I feel that it is suitably different. It is something that could also likely be immediately implemented with a software update.

I know personally, if my phone is in my pocket, ‘1 Beep’ mode is loud enough for me to know that its rung. However, I generally leave it on the highest ringtone. The reason is that eventually I will set it down somewhere on a table. I leave the ringer on loud in those cases so that I can hear it from the next room.

So 75%-90% of the time (ballparking it), I would like my phone to be in ‘1 Beep’ mode in my pocket, and full blown ring mode when it’s out of my pocket. The problem is simply that its too much ‘work’ for me to remember to change it all the time. If just once I forget to put it into full ring mode, I might miss an important call.

Well a lot of phones now come equipped accelerometers. They can sense their orientation in your hand and will change the screen orientation to match. Well whenever I see my phone on a coffee table, it is lying flat. When it is in my pocket its usually at some weird angle.

Phones could use this accelerometer data to adjust the ringtone volume. If the phone sense that it’s at a flat horizontal position and not moving, then turn up the ringtone. If it’s vertical or some other angle, turn it down to beep (or vibrate / soft-ring / whatever the user sets in the preferences).

This is something that phones already equipped with the hardware (iPhones and many of the phones inspired by iPhones) could do with just a software update. It would take a bit of work calibrating to ensure that it was not twitchy and always changing the ringtone. You would not want it to be overly sensitive, or under sensitive. But this is nothing that a few weeks of testing couldn’t hammer out. If people wanted this, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could have it in our phones by the end of next month.

I know it’s something that I would use. 

Location Dependent Ringtones

Have you ever been in a situation where you realized your phone should probably be on vibrate. Maybe its at the movies, in a class, during a mass or funeral, or in any number of other situations.

If you are like a lot of people you will forget to silence your phone at least once and have had it ring when you would prefer it not to. Or maybe you remembered to silence your phone, but forgot to turn the ringer back on afterwords. Then at the end of the day you realize you have a bunch of missed calls.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way your cell could automaticaly adjust its ringer. Well it can, with a bit of work on everyone's part.

Places where cell phones should typically be silenced can have small, weak, and cheap RF transmitters at their entrances. Phones could be equipped to read these signals and their software could then kick the phone into vibrate, silence, one beep, or some other mode based on user preferences. Then when you leave, your phone would switch back to whatever it had been on before hand.

The technology could even be used to transmit information about the location to your phone. A church could transmit their bulletin. A movie theater could send showtimes. A theater could send the playbill. This would of course not necessarily be the goal, but a nice side benefit.

There are challenges of course. From a technology perspective this wouldn't be too hard. But it would require phone manufactures to agree on at least some standards (frequency ranges for example). It would also require locations to install the transmitters for the idea to be useful.

Tomorrow I will discuss another solution to the problem of ringtones.