WiFi Carebears and other toys

[jeancinq]

I walked through Kmart yesterday, and I stared at a group of Carebears that sung together. They were not WiFi because they were attached to a large rugged platform with speakers on the side. "When are these toys going to have WiFi connections," I wondered. Each Carebear could connect to my home computer and download songs to sing. They could connect with each other to stay in sync.

We could make such Carebears today, and my kids would love it. Of course, I have older kids that could use other kinds of WiFi toys. We can not forget the Legos. They only problem I see is for the toys to scan the WiFi network to find the appropriate host. We need some sort of protocol that would initialize the toys to "mommy and daddy" (i.e. movie: Artificial Intelligence, [ I started my business, Cybertronix, more than ten years before the movie.])

Does anybody know of such protocols in the works? I figure the simple way is have the toy sniff the network and find http servers that have the correct access codes to the toy. For example, the toy would scan for http://169.254.5.128/toys/sunshine_carebear.html, given that 169.254.5.128 was a sniffed node.

[yonah]

I think about this a lot. If a toy, any toy, were Wi-Fi enabled, downloading fresh content would not be the only utility. Imagine if you will that this toy was tied to software on your PC - you could not only get feedback from how your child interacted with it, but also possibly send it signals.

For example, a doll that was designed to teach kids how to get dressed, could log via wi-fi the number of times a kids correctly buttoned its shirt or zippered its pants. Or, if your kid was trying to give a bottle to a wi-fi bear, you could send a wi-fi signal to the kitchen toy to start the 'range' so that the kid would warm up the bear's bottle.

There is so much potential in creating devices - not just toys - that use things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. For what its worth, I think that in some of these applications Bluetooth is probably a better option simply because it is designed for local discovery and ad-hoc networking, whilst wi-fi is more for general networking.

On the bright side, NYU has a program called ITP, and it offers a class known as Physical Computing - where people experiment with Art and other items, including toys, and connecting them to computers.

Check out http://www.itp.nyu.edu

[jeancinq]

I happen to see an assortment of new blog messages at various locations about related technology. One of interest is posted at Wired Magazine:

http://wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/intel.html

[jeancinq]

Here is another hyperlink to software that could transfer the data:

http://gnucleus.sourceforge.net/GnucDNA/

It uses the application of regular nodes, leaf nodes, and supernodes. The protocol is based on Gnuetella.

I am real close to such technology to just put it all together. I have my own virtual environment that manages distributed or clustered networks, processes, and data:

http://atomatrix.sourceforge.net/


I would expect a new vast market of a WiFi enabled RISC processors to evolve soon.

[jflynn]

I'm sure the toys will end up being shills to serve targeted ads to the kids. When the bear senses growling in the kid's tummy it says:

"Hi Johnny, go scream at Mommie until she takes you to McDonalds for a Happy meal: I'm hungreee! Happy Meal! I'm hungreee! Happy Meal!"

[jeancinq]

Looks I missed a company that already sells wireless teddies.

Wabi Buddies (http://www.wabi.com)


Mommy's Little Mouthpiece (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/tools.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set)
Teddy Ruxpin goes wireless. Plug Wabi's transmitter into a phone jack, call a designated toll-free number, and record a message. At selected intervals, the transmitter collects the data and sends it to the ursine bot's receiver over a 900-MHz signal. The bear giggles when it gets a message, and your kid simply presses its badge to play the audio. "Hi, Billy! Mommy and Daddy don't love you anymore. I'm in charge now, and things are going to change around this house, dammit!"