January 17, 2025 • 47 mins
The latest episode dives into the technological highlights and insights from CES and NRF, revealing how innovations in wireless technology and AI are shaping the future. Listeners can expect discussions on groundbreaking products, the impact of AI on retail, and the upcoming role of Wi-Fi HaLow technology.
• Recap of key highlights from CES and NRF - What I saw and why I think it matters!
• Introduction of new gaming devices and upcoming products
• Exploration of AI advancements and their implications
• Overview of Wi-Fi HaLow technology and its significance in IoT
• Discussion on AI in retail and personalized shopping experiences
• Insights on the future of connectivity and its legislative challenges
• Emphasis on the importance of engaging with lawmakers regarding e-rate issues
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
even better, check, check, check, one, two, one, two
.
Hello, hello, hello.
Good afternoon everybody.
It's drew linds, the wirelessnerd.
Today is january 17th.
It's time for the waves podcast.
Let's have some fun.
It's been two weeks.
It's been two weeks, man, andit's been two crazy weeks, what.
(00:23):
This is how the year alwaysstarts off, though.
Right, I mean, you've gotChristmas and you've got the
holidays, and then it dumpsright into New Year's and right
after that it's like let's geton a plane and go to CES, and
then you hit CES, and then,after CES, then you go to NRF,
and then, after NRF, you comehome and you take a deep breath,
and then this and then that andthe WLPC, and then this and
that, and, oh, very exciting.
(00:46):
Hope everybody is having anexciting start to the year.
There is so much to talk about,so much great stuff, so I'm
going to start off.
You know, the whole idea iswhat's new, what's now, what's
next, what's happening in thewireless industry?
And there's some stuffhappening in the wireless
industry.
Not a lot of news breaking inthe last couple of weeks, but I
guess that's.
(01:06):
You know, ces tends to do that,right, it just dominates every
cycle of product and everythingelse that we have going on.
So that's where we're going tostart today.
Gonna check my audio levels.
Good, that sounds fantastic.
Okay, let's start with CES.
I hope some of y'all went toCES.
I saw some of y'all at CES.
(01:27):
I got to hang out with Mr SeanBender and if you know Bender,
he's such a cool dude, he's sucha fun guy to hang out with.
And if you don't know Bender,come to WLPC, you'll meet him
there.
Go to reInvent.
He's always a dot thing.
Also, he runs the AWS usergroup for Kansas City.
So if you're looking for helpwith Amazon Web Services and AWS
(01:51):
, he's the dude to talk to overthere.
Anyway, I got to see him.
I got to see Mr Keith Parsons,I got to see Kevin from the
Wi-Fi Alliance, I got to seegolly, the people from Morse
Micro and the people from AsiaRF, and it was just.
It was a lot of fun and I thinkyou know I wrote a little bit
of an article and I posted it onLinkedIn, talking about some of
the big takeaways from CES thisyear and every year there's new
(02:12):
products, there's new TVs and8K TVs the size of a freaking
wall, and you know there's likeevery gadget, you can possibly
get your hands on Some of theneat stuff that I saw.
I like the lenovo replacementfor the steam deck.
I thought that that was prettyboss man.
I think that's going to be awinner this year that that'll
end up in one of my backpacks.
However, I also just saw thenew nintendo switch 2 trailer or
(02:35):
advertisement or whatever andthat's coming out.
Looks like february 4th, so I'mstoked about that.
That thing actually lookspretty neat and then I can play
games with my kids on it.
So that that was there.
Let's see what else.
What else do we have?
Oh man, this thing says itstopped streaming.
You know, I don't trust thisvery much.
Sometimes it works andsometimes it doesn't work.
(02:57):
Give them what they want, givethem what they need.
Oh yeah, look there.
You know, I don't understandthis.
It says it's not streaming.
Well, whatever, let's just keepgoing.
Let's keep going and see whathappens.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Now it's just like twitchingout on me right now.
You know, this is the problemwith doing some of these things
(03:18):
live, and now I've got to goback and I've got to edit out
all the stuff, like where I talkneedlessly when I'm trying to
see what's happening?
No, it's a waves january 17thpodcast, whatever.
Okay, well, I'm just gonna keepit going, all right.
So what else do we have thatthat was available on the gaming
side?
There were some new rigs, lotsof ai, lots of talk about ai.
(03:40):
Nvidia did the keynote and andintroduced their new you know,
their new little mini PC.
That's, you know, incredible,for if if you're a developer, if
you're trying to replacesomething like a Raspberry Pi
and get something with a littlebit more horsepower, they had a
really cool product that was outthere and that was pretty
awesome.
What else did they have?
(04:01):
The Eureka area, eureka parkdownstairs?
I love that.
What else did they have theEureka area, eureka Park
downstairs?
I love that area and I got tospend some time going there,
which was really neat.
You could see all the differentcountries represented.
Dude, I saw this person fromCanada and I'm going to try and
(04:21):
get her on the podcast where shemade these tiny little Wi-Fi
antennas like the tiniest littleWi-Fi antennas, like the
tiniest little Wi-Fi antennasthat work from something like
300 megahertz all the way up to60 gigahertz or 40 gigahertz,
and they're so tiny and you canfit 100 of them on the size of a
stamp and it's used for Wi-Fior NRF communications or any of
that stuff or any of the things.
(04:43):
It's really, really neat, sowe're going to have her on the
show here pretty shortly.
Saw her at Eureka Park.
What else happened downstairsat Eureka Park Interesting?
I'm trying to think throughsome of the innovation, like
what pops off at the top of myhead, but that's a great area.
I didn't get a chance to walk it.
I was there on a shortenedamount of time.
I only got to spend two daysand it was stacked with meetings
because I was actually workingthis year, which is kind of neat
.
But I had some good meetingsfor what it's worth, if anybody
(05:05):
cares but the ones that I got todo on the side I had to chase
down and I found them.
I was talking to the CEO of BirdBuddy, one of my favorite
products ever.
Bird Buddy is a birdhouse witha camera with AI in it and
whenever a bird lands, it snapsa photo of it and it compares it
to a library of other birds andit tells you which birds have
visited your house and so forth.
(05:26):
I started backing them onKickstarter like two years ago,
and their CEO, frankie, washanging out at the show I think
that was his name and I got tomeet him and talk to him a
little bit and I said, hey, theproblem is that the solar panel
doesn't charge the battery theway that I needed to in shade,
because I don't put a birdfeeder out in the middle of the
sun, I put it underneath a treeand I'm having an issue.
(05:47):
And he said, yeah, it's notreally about solar, it's about
the battery and the discharge ofthe battery.
I was like, oh yeah, so I walkoff and I thought, well, dude,
it's because you're using Wi-Fiand you're sucking all the life
out of the battery, because thethe Bird Buddy booth and once
you know it, there's the dudefrom Morse Micro sitting there
having a conversation with theteam from Bird Buddy.
(06:07):
I was like I was totally comingover here to introduce you guys
.
But that led me into the MorseMicro booth and I'm so excited
about what Morse Micro is doing.
They made some announcementslast year talking about what
they have and what they're doing, and this year I got to get the
whole kit and caboodle therundown from them, and so if
(06:29):
you're watching on the podcast,you can see the screen.
They had a little koala sittingon top of one of their APs and
that was really neat to see,because they're Aussies, they're
from Australia, and the firstthing they did is they offered
me a Foster's oil can beer,which was great.
I didn't get one, though,because it was like eight
o'clock in the morning, nineo'clock in the morning, but
whatever.
Anyway, they got to show metheir new chip, and so if you're
(06:50):
looking at the screen right now, you see on the far right-hand
side that's the existing Wi-FiHalo chip that they have.
Operates in the 900 megahertzspectrum, can carry about 36
megabit per pretty freakingawesome at distances of 900
megahertz.
It uses Wi-Fi over 900, whichis really neat, so it's easy to
adapt to.
In the center, that tiny littlesquare that's their new chipset
(07:13):
for their new version, and onthe left-hand side you can see
the form factor of their newversion.
There's a USB-A version on thefar left and a USB-C version,
and it's so tiny that what yousee is the USB plug itself, and
that was pretty neat.
And here's some of the bigdifferences between the two.
The old one is 6x6 QFN, the newone is 5x5.
It has a USB interface.
On the far right-hand side youcan see that 43 megabit per
(07:36):
second.
They say max-fi throughput.
No SAW filter required on this,which is a little bit different
, but full certification fromFCC and CE.
But the big news is it's 23 dBm, which is pretty neat, coming
off their power amplifier.
So it's got a really cool,intelligent little power
amplifier in there and it does agood job.
Now, what you see on the screenhere is what I'm super excited
(07:57):
about and I hope I get one ofthese.
He didn't have one sitting inhis bag, but this is their
developer board and this isbasically everything that you
can do and every way tointerface with the Wi-Fi Halo
chipset on a single board thatyou can use, including.
It's got your host MC in themiddle.
You can connect via Bluetooth.
You've got your Halo chipset onthe far top right-hand corner.
(08:17):
It has a button, aptly labeledbutton.
It's got current sensor down onthe bottom right-hand side.
But if you're trying to come upwith a way to use Wi-Fi Halo
and it's something that you wantto work with, this developer
board from Morse Micro isavailable and it's really neat
and allows you to get going andget started with their
technology, which I think is so,so cool.
Instead of having to soldertiny little wires together, you
(08:41):
can just snap stuff in here.
It's pretty neat.
So it was great to see that, andit was also great to see the
ecosystem that popped out ofthis.
And they had a number ofdifferent products on display in
their booth that showed howpeople are using it.
And they had one that was likea drone landing pad for fires.
In the outback right inAustralia there's a little
(09:02):
yellow and black landing pad anda drone would come and land on
it and it would recharge or getits, you know, be docked there
and then would take off andthese things can go a bunch of
miles you know, five miles, sixmiles away and still have
communication using Wi-Fi, haloand be able to backhaul that
traffic at 30 to 40 megabit persecond, which is pretty awesome.
(09:24):
So great use cases with MorseMicro.
Really neat to see what theywere doing at the show.
It was really, really cool.
And then, on top of that, as Iwas looking through everything
check this out oh, that's thewrong one.
There we go.
As I was looking througheverything, they showed me this
Microtech device.
I was like what in the world isthis device?
And I looked at it, I was likethat's a form factor that I
(09:44):
hadn't seen, and so we picked itup.
Oh look, you can see in theleft-hand corner.
There you can see the littleblack and yellow drone landing
pad, but that Microtech device.
The cool part here is, if youlook at the left-hand side of
the device, it shows you that itsupports LTE, gps, wi-fi, poe,
ethernet 2, ethernet 1, andPower, and I was like, dude,
what else is in there?
So I went to look for it onMicrotech's website and I
(10:06):
couldn't see it because it lookslike it's unannounced thus far.
So there's your scoop If you'relooking for something cool.
Microtech has a device comingout with LTE, wi-fi, wi-fi, halo
and BLE all built into a singledevice that's powered by PoE.
That's pretty awesome and,knowing MicroTik, it's probably
gonna be pretty inexpensive aswell, so glad to see that.
(10:27):
The next group that I got to seewhen I was out there was Asia
RF.
I went by and I saw them to seewhat they were doing
specifically with Wi-Fi Halo,and they have a new product.
They have a couple new products, and the one that I got a hold
of that was really neat is I gotto see.
Let's see if we can load thisup.
So they've got their littleWi-Fi Halo chipsets and
(10:50):
everything, I guess.
Oh, here it is, right here,their Mesh Outdoor Gateway.
So this is their Wi-Fi HaloMesh Outdoor Gateway.
It's pretty awesome and it'sgot it built in.
But one of the neat thingsabout it is it's powered either
via PoE or via USB-C, so thatwas pretty cool.
If you're trying to get a hugedistance and you don't want to
run PoE, you can just plug in aUSB-C to it.
(11:12):
There was that, and then theyalso had the first push-to-talk
handset.
That doesn't look like it'slisted on their website, but
they had the first push-to-talkhandset.
It's an Android device thatuses Wi-Fi Halo for connectivity
.
So stop and think about that900 megahertz spectrum Wi-Fi
Halo in a PTT like the oldNextel phones.
(11:37):
And they didn't have it there,but I think on my Twitter
account I posted a link to it,or I at least posted a picture
that was there.
So that was pretty neat to see.
Glad to see those.
Oh yeah, here it is.
Look at this.
So let me bring it up realquick.
Azure F Corp.
There it is right there.
It's got PTT on the side andit's handheld.
It's called the ARF-HL Ranger,world's first Wi-Fi Halo robust
(11:58):
mobile based on Android 12,flexible functions with LTE 5G
walkie-talkie messenger throughWi-Fi Halo to reach more than
one kilometer I think it's onekilometer communication Is that
what it says?
So that's pretty neat.
I got to see it.
It wasn't turned on or anything.
That might have just been amock-up unit, but it was good to
see that people are using Wi-FiHalo for things that are bigger
(12:19):
.
Because the question comes downto this with Wi-Fi Halo Client
devices, use cases.
If Wi-Fi Halo is so great, whenare we going to start to see
that ecosystem being built outfor client devices and use cases
?
Because as I talk to you, I'mstaring at a Wi-Fi Halo device
sitting right in front of me, aWi-Fi Halo access point, and
they can mesh and they cancommunicate over long ranges,
(12:40):
but the killer apps are going tocome in the shape of their
ability to produce a clientecosystem, and right now there
may not be a lot, but as I movedinto the next week, I kept this
in the back of my head and so Ishowed up at NRF, the National
Retail Federation, nationalRetail Forum, I think it's
called Federation.
(13:00):
I walked the show floor thereand I saw all the IoT world.
It was this about IoT and thatabout IoT, but no one was
talking about Wi-Fi Halo withregards to IoT in that specific
instance, and I thought you know, that's what I want to see.
I want to see that use casegrow for people that are using
Wi-Fi Halo for IoT.
(13:20):
So, as the client devices come,I'm sure that we'll see more of
what's going on.
What else did I get to see overat CES?
This was a really, really neatone.
This one's called I don't knowif it's called Real Labels or
Realables.
Either way, this is prettyawesome.
So imagine a standard shippinglabel for UPS or FedEx or USPS,
(13:44):
whatever.
It is just a standard shippinglabel.
It's the same.
It's just a little bit thicker.
It's like if you stack two orthree of them on top of each
other.
This thing is an intelligentlabel in the sense that it has a
battery built into it and it'sgot a 5G or an NB-IoT
quote-unquote 5G chipset builtinto it as well.
They're telling me it's a $25label.
You buy it for 25 bucks, youprint out your packing label on
(14:05):
it, you slap it on your box, youship it off and you can track
your package.
It updates every 20 minutes forup to 30 days.
So if you're worried about ahigh-value item moving from
point A to point B, you buy oneof these labels.
It works with the standardlabel printer and you peel the
back of it off, it's got he onthese labels.
It works with the standardlabel printer and you peel the
(14:27):
back of it off, he has a whole.
I also asked these guys to jumpon the podcast as well, because
I want to know how they builtthe battery around this and what
that thing looks like on theinside.
But you peel it off, it's gotthe battery and it's got the 5G
chip in there.
You tap it.
It's got NFC.
So you tap it and you activateit and once you activate it, it
gives you that every 20-minuteupdate on what's going on the
app.
Everything's included in thecost so that you can track it
(14:48):
wherever you need to.
Very, very cool to be able todo that with a shipping label,
because I know I mean put it onyour luggage.
People are stuffing air tagsand everything's in their
luggage trying to figure outwhere stuff is.
So from a shipping perspective,I thought that this was pretty
neat.
Super stoked to see them at atCES and talk about the product
offering that they had.
(15:09):
I was very excited.
It was really neat, just kindof came out of the blue.
It was good to see them.
So Reelables Reelables,whatever you want to call them
they were there.
The other thing that I got tosee and this was really cool
because I had just done a littlebit of a podcast on this was
the Slate 7.
This is the new Wi-Fi 7 routerfrom GLInet and GLInet the good
(15:32):
life.
They were like the coolestpeople.
They were so nice.
We walked into their booth andI was elated to see the product.
We got hands-on with it.
We got to use the touchscreenthat's on the front of it.
My buddy Sean and I got toactually get hands-on.
We got to see what it was doing.
It's not available yet.
They said it'll be available infirst quarter 2025.
No word on the pricing yet, butvery, very cool to see them come
(15:54):
out with a Wi-Fi 7 device.
It looks very similar to theother travel router that they
have the Barrel AX right there.
So here's the Slate at Wi-Fi 6,the Slate Plus.
It's the same form factor asthis one right here in the
middle, but it features Wi-Fi 7.
I'm sure there's some otherneat things about the device
itself.
It's not online yet.
(16:15):
I don't see it online yet, butmaybe it will be.
Then, of course, is the Mangothe N300, the Mango one of my
favorite things in the entireindustry is on there.
But we got to see these guys,which was really neat.
They were super awesome.
They've got really cool littlemagnets, so happy to see their
product continuing to evolve.
So, from a Wi-Fi 7 perspective,an AP perspective, it was neat
(16:36):
to see them out there.
Now, the other thing this waspretty cool and this was, you
know, this played right into thenerd side is the Nordic
Semiconductor Thingy the Thingy91, a multi-sensor cellular IoT
prototype platform.
I took some really coolpictures of it.
Here's the PCB the front of thePCB.
Here's the back of the PCB.
It has all kinds of stuff in itand it's got.
(16:58):
Let's see the prototypingplatform for cellular IoT using
LTE-M NB-IoT GNSS.
It's ideal for proof of concept.
It's got Wi-Fi built into it.
It's got BLE built into it.
It has all kinds of stuff builtinto it and I got to play with
it and get hands-on.
I walked into the NordicSemiconductor booth.
I was like y'all just show mesomething cool.
I just want to see somethingcool and they're like check this
(17:19):
out, doesn't look like that'sgoing to load.
So I got a chance to gethands-on with this.
If you're looking for something, you're trying, this is a
really neat deal.
What they don't have on here isthey don't have their tracking
dashboard, their asset trackingdashboard, and it was pretty
awesome.
Once you go on the dashboard,it shows you a global view and
it shows you where it is.
It can't run, I guess, for 30days, like a shipping label can,
(17:43):
but if you connect this thingto a battery, I'm sure you can
do some pretty incredible stuffwith this no weird energy
harvesting, no weird stuff.
It's got a USB connector topower it up and this is the
Thingy 91.
But this is pretty.
It's pretty cool.
If you look at this.
It's certified globally.
It doesn't just work in NorthAmerica, it's global Multi-mold
LTE NB-IoT 72200 megahertz, 23dB in output power pretty
(18:09):
awesome.
64 megahertz, cortex-m33, aMegaFlash, 256k RAM, a BLE NFC
support, a logistics assetattracting smart city, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
So if you're looking for thingsto play with I guess that's
kind of the thing here If you'relooking for things to play with
, the Morse Micro developerboard, as well as the Nordic
thingy 91, those are pretty coollittle things that you can
prototype with and have a goodtime.
(18:30):
It was.
It was great to see them.
Another one of my favoritemanufacturers that was there.
That makes really fun boards toplay with is rack wireless.
I've done I've got one sittinghere somewhere I've done some
work with rack in the past usingtheir, you know, for their
laura wan stuff and they have Iforgot what they call them those
little caterpillar connectors,whatever they're called.
On the right hand side you cansee it there.
(18:50):
This is the.
Oh, what's it called?
This thing is called the.
Come on, come on, drew, you'llremember.
I can't remember what it'scalled.
They're little Riz Riz Raz, rizRiz Raz, wiz, wizmesh, that's
(19:11):
what it's called.
It.
The riz bro, the, the riz meshor whiz mess.
So I'm gonna screw it up now.
Whiz box is what it's called.
It's a developer platform.
This is the rack 4630,basically this, like lego for rf
nerds.
You can stack up components,gps and screens and and you know
, nbiot and whatever else youwant.
You can stack stuff up and usethis as your baseboard to get
(19:33):
into projects, and one of thethings that they had.
There was this group calledRocklin and they were showing
off all these weird things thatthey've done with WizBlock.
Right, here's their starter kitfor mesh, but they had all
these sensors.
They had sensors that go inyour walls to track for water
vapor or water.
They had solar node that youcould plug into it.
(19:56):
They've got alarms.
They've got every differentsensor that you can imagine.
Rockland has a really coolgroup of things that they've
made.
They also manufacture their ownproducts, and one of them this
is the Meshtastic Echo Wirelessmodule.
I think this is one of the onesthat they showed off there and
it's got you can send.
(20:16):
I believe this is the one youcan send messages back and forth
to each other.
So, in the spirit of playingwith stuff and prototyping
things and trying to figure outnew technologies that are out
there, rack Wireless was there.
They had their product, morsehad their product and then the
Nordic thingy.
Now, on top of all that, Ialmost got run over by Steve
Aoki, but that's okay.
(20:37):
I didn't have Steve Aoki on ascooter, on my bingo card or on
my checklist cruising throughCES, but he showed up and he put
on a hell of a party man.
He took over the Panasonicbooth on a demonstration for
techniques and turned it into arave, and if you weren't there
for that, I'm sad that youmissed it.
I didn't even see a lot ofpeople talking about it online,
(20:57):
but that was one of the coolermoments I've ever had at ces was
the panasonic booth.
Just, they just didn't care andthey turned up the speakers and
they turned up the music andthey just jammed and aoki threw
down a great set and had thewhole floor jumping up and down.
I can't imagine what it waslike to be a vendor with one of
the other manufacturers, man,because they were probably
pissed that that was going onbecause it was so loud and so
(21:22):
awesome all at the same time.
So that was neat.
Then I got the chance to goupstairs and go to a suite and
meet with the team from SparkMicrosystems.
This was so cool.
They are using ultra-widebandin a way that no one else is
using and they've channelizedultra-wideband so that they can
do things for super low-latencydevices like gaming mice, gaming
(21:47):
keyboards, headphones, lowlatency headphones, music
transmission and theirdemonstration was something that
I had never seen.
It was really cool.
They took a sound pad and onthat sound pad.
They had one audio path, likean output from the audio going
to direct to a speaker, and youwould tap the pad right and when
(22:09):
you tap it you'd hear it goboom, boom, boom.
You'd hear it make the noise.
Then they had another audiopath that went out across a
standard Bluetooth transmitterand receiver and when you would
tap it you would hear a delaybecause of the delay that
Bluetooth interjects.
So when you hit the pad,instead of just hearing pop, pop
, pop, you'd hear pop, pop, pop,pop, pop pop because of the
(22:30):
delay from that second one.
Then what they did is they hada switch where they flipped it
over and they ran it acrosstheir ultra-wideband and they
would tap on it again and therewas no significant difference.
I couldn't even tell just bylistening to it that it was
going across wireless versus thewire, whereas with Bluetooth I
could hear that delay.
So when they talk about thingsthat they've done and they're
(22:52):
talking about using UWB not justas a transmission mechanism for
location services, but as atransmission mechanism for audio
and for gaming, it was really,really cool and it was great to
see what they were doing with it, because they are using the
spectrum that people are usingthe spectrum, that people are
using the spectrum only for oneor two things right now, so it
(23:13):
was phenomenal to see them usingit for something entirely
different.
Three to 10 gig range.
Their channel widths aregreater than 500 megahertz.
It was really neat and I put ona pair of headphones that they
3D printed.
Let me see if I have that they3D printed and I was able to
walk around the room and theirlittle device was their little
transmitter.
Here it is right here on thescreen.
(23:34):
Their little transmitter waspretty cool because if it was
lit up green, it means I wascommunicating over UWB, but if I
got too far away or if Iobstructed it, then it would
flip over to BLE automatically.
Granted, it would addcompression to the music or it
would add a little bit oflatency.
But I was able to see and hearthe difference using UWB versus
using BLE and it was incredibleand the sound quality was great
(23:58):
and they even put on Zeppelin asthe track to listen to and they
showed a demonstration.
They had a guitar where theguitarist could play on the
guitar and it was transmittingvia UWB to the amplifier and you
couldn't discern any differencebetween them.
And here's oh, there you go.
Here's a picture of the demo.
So the demo, the way thatworked and they split it up, is
going to that JBL speaker on theedge.
(24:18):
It was so neat to see.
It was one of the cooler demosthat actually perfectly
articulated what they weretrying to get across.
So kudos to the team for makingthat happen.
They make this tiny littlechipset that can be integrated
into a number of differentdevices for UWB transmission.
This is the actual transmitterand antenna and they told me
they're like play with it, havefun.
(24:39):
So what I would do is I'd putmy hand in front of it to see if
it blocked the signal.
I'd actually grab the antennato see if it blocked the signal.
And it would.
And they were transferringstupendous amounts of data at
very, very, very low latency andonly consuming look at that two
and a half milliamps of poweron that device on transmission
(25:00):
and reception of it.
So very low power, extremelyhigh throughput, extremely low
latency.
So cool to see someone doingsomething different with this.
I mean, look at this, it's gotfive nanoseconds or less.
I mean it was really, reallyneat.
And again, I think the thingthat I liked about it it was.
(25:22):
I mean great, yeah, sound andgreat and keyboards and mice and
all that other stuff.
It wasn't even necessarilyabout that for me, as much as it
was about the fact that they'reusing Spectrum to do something
different than anybody else inthe space is using it for.
And I was like that's reallycool, because we heard about,
you know, corvo, and we heardabout Morse Micro and we hear
about, you know, manufacturersand vendors, cisco and all these
people putting UWB into theirdevices.
(25:44):
But it's like to do what it'slike to do real-time location
service.
Okay, that's cool, but, dude,that's a lot of spectrum, uwb
spectrum and there's a ton.
Look, 3.1 to 10.6 gigahertzrange.
Come on, man, you're talkingabout seven gig worth of
spectrum, almost Dude.
There's a lot that you can dowith that.
So for them to be able toutilize it in a way that we
(26:05):
hadn't seen before, that is whatsparked my interest with Spark
Microsystems.
So kudos to the team.
I really appreciate them takingthe time to show it to me.
30 minutes was the perfectamount of time for me to see
what was going on.
I'll also hopefully be bringingthem on the show here in the
future.
So if you have questions onsome of that.
Please just let me know.
Now, that's what I saw at CES,and CES was it's just such a
(26:27):
good show.
But it's just such a good show,but it's so much.
Man and I got to see the newera.
Wi-fi 7 devices were there andwe got to see how that
interacted and what the wholehome of the future looks like
Some really, really cool stuffhappening in the Amazon area,
too.
It was just neat to see all ofit come together the brisket
grill that you can throw a pieceof meat in and use AI to figure
out what the meat is and how tocook it AI to figure out what
(26:48):
the meat is and how to cook it.
It's like insane stuff.
That was there, but I didn'tsee anything that I was like, oh
, I've got to get that, I've gotto take it home, other than the
Lenovo pad for the Steam Deck.
I thought that was pretty neat.
However, with Nintendo comingright on the heels of that,
dropping their Switch 2, whatare you going to do?
So on to New York City and NRF.
The National Retail Federationwent over there and there were
(27:10):
some really neat pieces oftechnology, but, dude, I want to
say that there was probablymore AI at NRF than there was at
CES.
Every single vendor it feltlike had AI worked into their
name in some way shape or form,or in their booth or talking
about the benefits of it, and itwas even for someone who's
truly passionate abouttechnology, it was a bit much
man.
It was like, all right, tell meyour AI story.
(27:32):
And I'm usually not that guy,right, I appreciate when people
go out of their way to do someneat stuff, but it was like dude
, that's the story.
But it ended up that kind ofwas the story, to be honest,
because there were applicableuses of intelligence that people
could use to change theirretail interactions, and one of
the ones I liked I thought thatwas pretty cool is they had this
(27:57):
3D body scanner where you'd goand stand on a little pedestal
and it rotated you around and ittook a full 3D snapshot of you
and it blanked out your face andall the good stuff, and what it
did is it would tell you whatyour sizes were.
So it would size your shouldersit would size the length of your
torso and your arms and yourwaist and everything and your
shoulders, which size the lengthof your torso and your arms and
your waist and everything, andthen you can take that and apply
it to a profile and so you canput it on your Amazon profile,
for example, and then you can goshopping and it's only going to
(28:17):
show you the stuff that'sactually going to fit you.
And it talked about the waysthat retailers could utilize
technology like that to makeyour shopping experiences better
, so that you're not sittingthere trying to figure out
what's a good fit or not.
And then, obviously, that goesinto the whole stand in front of
the smart mirror and theclothes automatically appear on
you and you can buy it with yourvoice or tap online to buy it.
And we're reaching this pointwith retail.
(28:38):
That's really, really neat, andI thought part of the thing to
me of the transaction that wasmissing was the ability for the
computer to understand exactlywho I am and what I like and
what I don't like and what mysizes are, because I'm a big
dude.
If you've never met me in person, I'm like 6'5" and I got a
little belly on me, and sonothing ever fits right.
(28:59):
Everything is just like thismuch too short, it's always just
a little too short in the wrongplaces, and it's difficult for
me to find stuff that fits.
This is where, if Fresh CleanTees was my sponsor, I would
mention that their tall shirtsare perfect for tall dudes like
me.
I love it.
So if you guys will sponsor meand send me t-shirts, I'd
totally appreciate it.
(29:19):
Fresh Clean Tees, anyway, Ishould reach out to them.
Maybe not All 500 of you thatlisten I appreciate you
listening.
Go find your friends so I canget some cool sponsorships for
t-shirts.
But the idea you can take theinput and and give an input into
retail that you can take withyou and say, hey, this is me,
what do you have that fits?
(29:39):
Or loaded on a profile thatsays this these are my body
characteristics, what do youhave?
Only bring me the stuff thatmatters to me.
Don't, don't show me somethingthat I can't fit into anyway.
It sounds like more of a dudething, though.
Right, because when I goshopping with my wife and either
of my daughters, it's neverabout I don't know if it's ever
about it fitting or not fitting.
It's like, oh, this looksbetter, and then you try and
(30:01):
figure out how to make it fit.
I don't know, I'm not that dude, I'm just not that dude.
Shopping for me, I guess is alittle bit different, but seeing
real-life interactions with AIthere was cool.
And then, obviously, the JustWalk Out technology, where
people can walk into aconvenience store and wave their
(30:22):
hand or just walk out with aproduct and their hand was
always great to see.
There was something that Ithought was pretty neat and that
was the e-poster from Y-Charge.
Let me see if I can share myscreen here on this one.
I called it Cool Wireless Tech,and so what these guys had is
they had a I'll minimize thesemessages here they had this
(30:43):
display set up and on thatdisplay it was fed via wireless
power and content was uploadedvia Wi-Fi, and it was pretty
awesome to see.
I stood in front of this thingfor a little while, rubbing my
hand over it up and down to seehow quickly I could turn the
light off and how quickly itwould come back on.
So that was pretty neat to see.
(31:03):
But this was really coolbecause it was different.
It was a different take onwireless.
It wasn't just Wi-Fi but it wasabout taking a product and
putting it out on displayanywhere in a store that you
went to and using two wirelesstechnologies one via power and
one via data to update it, andso you get about 30 feet out of
it.
All the information is onwhitechargecom so you guys can
(31:25):
go look it up, but that was apretty cool product to see.
One of the other products that Iloved, man, was the chewable
coffee.
Oh God, I don't even rememberwhat it's called.
God, let me see if I can findit.
Man, these guys were awesome.
And here we go, dry brew.
There they are.
Look, dude, if you want to getripped on caffeine, I'm not even
(31:49):
lying.
This thing jacked me up, man.
I took one and they said thatit's like 25 milligrams and it's
like drinking a cup of coffeeand a chew.
And they didn't taste bad.
They taste like coffee.
They were great.
They're not that expensive, butfreaking, hang on, man, I ate
one of these.
I.
They're not that expensive butfreaking, hang on, man, I ate
one of these.
I was just like wow, the peopleI was with were freaking out.
(32:10):
They're like Drew, what did youjust eat?
I said I don't know.
Man, feeling freaking crazy.
It was pretty cool.
So if you want something that'san instant pick-me-up, it felt
like, check out Dry Brew Coffee.
They're pretty cool.
I'm going to buy a bunch andmaybe hand some of those out.
(32:33):
So that was pretty had nothingto do with actual technology,
but they were there and I got akick out of it.
So now you know what I knowabout dry brew coffee.
Let's see what else did we seeover at NRF?
This was pretty neat.
You know it's being a nerd.
This was MachineQ introduced anew sensor, that's their LoRaWAN
sensor, and it runs on 2.4 giglow power RF also, and what it
does is it has a GPIO interfacethat's like RS-232.
And it's one of those thingswhere you think hasn't someone
(32:57):
done this already?
But essentially what it does isit gives you the ability to
connect any port, you know, anyserial port into your LoRaWAN
network, and this is a big deal,right, and I love Machine Q.
You guys know that Special spotin my heart for the whole MQ
team over there.
But the problem is you get theequipment manufacturers that
(33:18):
make these pieces of equipmentand you want it to be connected.
It's like great, you have tobuy their gateway or you have to
buy their software or you haveto buy access to their API, and
so that's on one end of thespectrum.
The other end of the spectrumis it doesn't support anything
at all because it just has aserial port and there's no way
for you to get it onto yournetwork.
So you're dealing with oldpieces of equipment that have no
connectivity and there's no wayto interface, build an
(33:40):
interface that's hardware on oneside and RF on the other side.
So that's what they did.
It sounds like I said, itsounds dumb, it sounds like
hasn't someone done that?
But in fact there's probably afew out there, but this one
works on the MachineQ network.
So I was really happy to seethis.
Rs-232, 45, 5-volt TTL and GPIO.
(34:01):
There you go.
Simple, simple things.
It's the simple pleasures thatmake me happy.
So congratulations to MachineQfor getting that thing launched.
Yeah, that was the gist of NRFfor me.
Mine was stacked more withmeetings, which was phenomenal,
and New York is such a greatcity and just got to go to
dinner with some incrediblepeople and spend time with them
(34:23):
and just nerd out.
It was a really good time inNRF this year.
Not a lot of wireless people onthe show floor, but again, it's
not necessarily a wireless show, it's more of an ecosystem show
.
However, I did get to see myold crew from Cisco, so I got to
walk by their booth and seethem give presentations.
That was pretty neat.
I'm on meetings, it's good tosee you guys.
And then my booth was right nextto the Comcast business booth
(34:45):
and if you know me, you know Iworked there for five years and
so it was just like a big familyreunion hanging out with those
nerds, but always cool to seethem.
What else did we look at there?
I walked up and down the showfloor.
I didn't see anything thatreally stood out.
It was just so much AI, ai, ai.
But the real worldimplementations of it were neat
to see.
You know, last year I thoughtone of the coolest things was
(35:06):
the ability to do translation,real-time translation.
Those guys moved down to thefirst floor and settled on the
second floor this year, so thatwas a little weird to see.
But it was good to see a lot ofthe other people there.
Myst had a booth there.
Xtreme had a booth there withWi-Fi stands in it.
So extra points to the team atXtreme.
I know Meter some, but you guysgot to bring those out to the
trade show.
It was good to see so manyfriendly faces.
(35:28):
Now, other than that, there area couple of things going on that
I want to get to real quickbefore I end this one.
There's some stuff happening,as you know, in the US.
On Monday we get a newpresident and there's already
some stuff that's happeningwhere Senator Cruz has been put
in charge of a bunch of stuffand it's not just the Commerce
(35:52):
Committee I forgot whichcommittee he's in charge of.
There's a few of them there,but this is what hit me.
So one of the things that he'sadamantly and staunchly been
against for a while is schooldistricts and libraries lending
Wi-Fi hotspots to students viaE-rate E-rate in and of itself.
I'm terrified to know what'sgoing to happen via E-Rate E
-Rate in and of itself.
I'm terrified to know what'sgoing to happen to E-Rate over
the next couple of months.
And I think you should be too,if you're in education.
(36:13):
Make sure your voice is heard.
Call your congressmen, callyour senators, call the people
that can help get everyone tounderstand how important E-Rate
is to school districts and toeducation.
Now this right here, lendingWi-Fi hotspots to students via
E-rate I feel like this is alittle bit misaligned, but it's
just me.
Ted Cruz has argued the ruleviolates communication acts and
(36:36):
it opens up children to realrisks of abuse due to a lack of
limits on their broadband usage.
And you know, the conversation,right, is that if you have a
Wi-Fi hotspot and a kid can useit, then they can use it to
access anything, and then theydon't like that.
Well, dude, I mean, yes, right,obviously, couple that with
what's going on with Facebook,you know now saying that they're
(36:58):
going to release all thefilters, and X has released all
the filters.
It's not a good time to beonline for children, and I would
argue that, as a parent of fivewonderful children, it's up to
me as a parent, I think, to makesure that I block a lot of that
content.
But then what happens ifthey're on the carrier side?
So it's never been moreimportant to look at things like
(37:19):
Bark.
I love Bark.
Y'all know I love Bark Ifyou've ever listened to me or
the show I love Bark and it putsthe ability to do mobile device
management in the parents'hands for client devices that
are children's devices.
It's not enough to use theApple family stuff or the
Android family stuff to limitthe times that people go online.
You really need to dig intowhat people are doing, and the
(37:40):
only way to do that is, by usingan application that understands
what the children are doing andalerts you or blocks them from
doing things that can be harmfulto them.
I don't want to read everysingle text message that my
13-year-old daughter sends.
I don't, I don't, really Idon't.
I love her and I trust her andI want to make sure that
whatever she's doing is safe.
(38:01):
So I rely on Bark to tell melike hey, something came up and
it's not safe and you shouldhave a conversation with her
about it.
So it's never been moreimportant to keep an eye on your
kiddos.
If this goes away, this is abummer.
I mean the whole Wi-Fi hotspotsnot going to children because
of this dude.
You know, what really grinds mygears is the fact that there
(38:23):
was so much money and, granted,beat is now going through
everything but there was so muchmoney made available during
COVID for cities andmunicipalities and school
districts and whoever to deploythese free Wi-Fi networks and
free connectivity networks togive students the ability to get
online.
And now we're facing a timewhere that didn't happen.
People's problems didn't getsolved and the people that put
(38:44):
these hotspot Band-Aids on theirschool districts and cities are
about to realize how much of ascrew-up that was, and that's
money that was thrown away.
I mean, you're talking millionsof dollars in contracts that
went to carriers to lease or torent or to buy Wi-Fi hotspots in
their plans, and now there'snothing to show for it, man, and
it's so frustrating to see that.
So hopefully that's a goodlesson learned.
(39:06):
Sometimes the only way to learnis by going through it, but I
hope people realize that unlessyou own the infrastructure,
you're going to forever bepaying that infrastructure, and
so we'll see what happens there.
So I did want to talk aboutthat because just be wary of
what's happening at the FCC now.
Lord only knows.
And on that note, along withFCC, dudecc, dude, look at this.
(39:28):
So it wasn't, you know, itwasn't just the tp link is now
being investigated about chineseconnections and backdoor
hacking and whatnot, and huawei,you know, took it on the chin
and huawei is out of the us.
The rip and replace program iscoming.
But january 17th today, danoeditorial director over at Light
Readings says buy cells nowfaces a Huawei-sized security
(39:50):
problem.
Buy cells with direct ties toChina's reportedly under US
government investigation oversecurity concerns the same
situations that sparked the USto put Huawei on its blacklist.
Dude, all of this sucks rightfor communications, in my
opinion, and I'm not saying thatthis is right or it's wrong, or
it's good or it's bad.
What I'm saying is that thisjust sucks for communications
(40:12):
because Bicells makes equipment,just like Huawei makes
equipment and, granted, I reallyam not a fan of the Huawei
stuff because it's such a ripoffof Cisco, but Bicells makes
this equipment that's low costand it works relatively well and
it's pretty widely deployedequipment that's low cost and it
works relatively well and it'spretty widely deployed.
There's not a lot ofcompetition in that space.
To make radios that do what buycells does and the way that they
(40:33):
do it, and to know that this isprobably going to see the same
fate that huawei did and the tblink is probably going to see
that same fate also, it's like,dude, if this happens to buy
cells, there's not a lot ofradio vendors that we can look
at.
So you've got a few that areout there, you've got nokia,
you've got salona, you've gotsome of these other groups that
are making these 5g radios and Imean their market's about to
blow up.
It's, you know, good for them.
(40:54):
But, dude, there I didn'texpect buy sales man that's.
My heart goes out to that team.
But what are you gonna do?
What else do we have on here?
This is another one.
I was scanning the news over atLight Reading who will buy
Charter Dude?
I didn't even know that thiswas happening.
Granted, they're not for saleyet, right?
(41:14):
But good old Mike Dano rananother Light Reading article
here two days ago.
Analysts expect Comcast orT-Mobile to make a play for
Charter Communications becausethe incoming Trump
administration may be lenienttowards such mega transactions.
Communications because theincoming Trump administration
may be lenient towards such megatransactions.
Now, I don't know if there'sany truth to this, but the fact
that Mr Danu is reporting thisin light reading he's got better
(41:35):
connections in the industrythan I do.
I'm sure it's a hot debate andtopic in most financial circles.
Td Cohen, financial analyst,says we believe a Comcast
charter merger can makeindustrial logical sense given
the scale and subsequent massivesynergies.
Dude man, charcast, that's great, oh my gosh.
Well, I don't know.
(41:57):
We'll see the magenta factor.
T-mobile's making moves, man,you know.
So let's see what this means.
You know, next week isdefinitely going to usher in
Oops, I'm.
This means, you know, next weekis definitely going to usher in
oops, I'm looking at the wrongscreen.
There you go.
Next week is definitely goingto usher in some stuff and and
so we'll see comcast or t-mobilefor charcast.
I don't know, I don't know.
(42:18):
I guess we'll just wait and seeand see what happens there.
Last but not least, I thoughtthat this was a pretty neat one,
again scanning the news over alight reading australian is
promising to $1.9 billion tocomplete a full fiber national
broadband network.
So good for them, man, verycool.
Also note the awesomeadvertisements on this webpage.
(42:39):
Anyway, I love it.
That's great.
National broadband networkdelivering fiber, 622,000 FTTEM
premises upgraded to FTDP.
Very, very cool man.
So congratulations to them.
Last but not least, I'm goingto click on this little link
right here because at BroadbandBreakfast the other Drew and
(43:00):
Blake Ledbetter reporting onthis one that Hawaii is
announcing the plans to becomethe first fully fiber state in
the United States.
Congratulations to Hawaii.
I hope that that does wondersfor them.
Hawaiian telecom president SueShin from the Hawaii Business
Magazine, pictured here.
They're hoping to achieve agroundbreaking landmark to be
the first in the world atdeploying all fiber optic across
(43:23):
their entire state.
So that should be really cool.
Look at that $1.7 billioninvestment to go Hawaiian.
And then you look at Australiangovernment and look at that.
Theirs is a $1.85 billioninvestment Lots of billions
going into this.
So I'm going to use that as asegue to talk about next week.
Next week I'm in town for acouple days and then I'm getting
(43:44):
on an airplane and I'm going toHawaii.
I'll be in Hawaii for the nexttwo weeks.
After next week I'm takingwaves to the waves.
I'm going to be participatingwith Eero offering free Wi-Fi at
the World Surfing LeagueChampionships and it's going to
be really fun.
So I don't know if it's goingto last all two weeks I'm down
there.
It might only last a coupledays.
(44:05):
I'm learning a whole lot aboutsurfing.
I had no idea about surfing,but I'm learning how it's done
and it should be really, reallyneat.
So I'm looking forward to that.
I'm looking forward to gettingthe show down there.
I don't know what's to come ofit.
I'm gonna take some coolpictures and post them up.
If you have any questions aboutwhat I'm doing and how I'm
doing it, please reach out,because I'm building a temporary
(44:26):
event network for this event.
We're setting up on North ShoreBonsai Pipeline free Wi-Fi from
Eero all over the World SurfingLeague Championship.
It's going to be dope.
We've got the VIP sectionthat's going to be covered.
We've got the vendor areathat's going to be covered.
It's going to be super sweet tosee all that come together.
So looking forward to that.
I know WSL is looking forwardto it.
Also, I get to rub shoulderswith some people that are much
(44:55):
more surfer looking than I am,and the last thing my
47-year-old butt needs to do isgo on top of a surfboard.
But I'll stick to my waves.
They can stick to theirs.
That being said, I hope you allhave a wonderful weekend.
It's a three-day weekend foreveryone.
Monday is a day for the UnitedStates.
It's Martin Luther King Jr Day,so make sure you think about
MLK.
It's also a presidentialinauguration that's happening
that day, and it's also a dayoff for a lot of people.
(45:17):
So if you're in the States,just relish in Americanism and
enjoy your three-day weekend,and we'll talk to you all next
week, and I hope to have somegreat interviews for you coming
up, based on some of the peopleI talked to at CES and RF.
So, all that being said, thisis fun.
I enjoyed going over everything.
If you have any questions orcomments or concerns or whatever
(45:38):
.
Drop me a message.
You know how to get in touchwith me.
Find me online at Wireless Nerdfrom the Waves Podcast.
even better, check, check, check, one, two, one, two
.
Hello, hello, hello.
Good afternoon everybody.
It's drew linds, the wirelessnerd.
Today is january 17th.
It's time for the waves podcast.
Let's have some fun.
It's been two weeks.
It's been two weeks, man, andit's been two crazy weeks, what.
(00:23):
This is how the year alwaysstarts off, though.
Right, I mean, you've gotChristmas and you've got the
holidays, and then it dumpsright into New Year's and right
after that it's like let's geton a plane and go to CES, and
then you hit CES, and then,after CES, then you go to NRF,
and then, after NRF, you comehome and you take a deep breath,
and then this and then that andthe WLPC, and then this and
that, and, oh, very exciting.
(00:46):
Hope everybody is having anexciting start to the year.
There is so much to talk about,so much great stuff, so I'm
going to start off.
You know, the whole idea iswhat's new, what's now, what's
next, what's happening in thewireless industry?
And there's some stuffhappening in the wireless
industry.
Not a lot of news breaking inthe last couple of weeks, but I
guess that's.
(01:06):
You know, ces tends to do that,right, it just dominates every
cycle of product and everythingelse that we have going on.
So that's where we're going tostart today.
Gonna check my audio levels.
Good, that sounds fantastic.
Okay, let's start with CES.
I hope some of y'all went toCES.
I saw some of y'all at CES.
(01:27):
I got to hang out with Mr SeanBender and if you know Bender,
he's such a cool dude, he's sucha fun guy to hang out with.
And if you don't know Bender,come to WLPC, you'll meet him
there.
Go to reInvent.
He's always a dot thing.
Also, he runs the AWS usergroup for Kansas City.
So if you're looking for helpwith Amazon Web Services and AWS
(01:51):
, he's the dude to talk to overthere.
Anyway, I got to see him.
I got to see Mr Keith Parsons,I got to see Kevin from the
Wi-Fi Alliance, I got to seegolly, the people from Morse
Micro and the people from AsiaRF, and it was just.
It was a lot of fun and I thinkyou know I wrote a little bit
of an article and I posted it onLinkedIn, talking about some of
the big takeaways from CES thisyear and every year there's new
(02:12):
products, there's new TVs and8K TVs the size of a freaking
wall, and you know there's likeevery gadget, you can possibly
get your hands on Some of theneat stuff that I saw.
I like the lenovo replacementfor the steam deck.
I thought that that was prettyboss man.
I think that's going to be awinner this year that that'll
end up in one of my backpacks.
However, I also just saw thenew nintendo switch 2 trailer or
(02:35):
advertisement or whatever andthat's coming out.
Looks like february 4th, so I'mstoked about that.
That thing actually lookspretty neat and then I can play
games with my kids on it.
So that that was there.
Let's see what else.
What else do we have?
Oh man, this thing says itstopped streaming.
You know, I don't trust thisvery much.
Sometimes it works andsometimes it doesn't work.
(02:57):
Give them what they want, givethem what they need.
Oh yeah, look there.
You know, I don't understandthis.
It says it's not streaming.
Well, whatever, let's just keepgoing.
Let's keep going and see whathappens.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Now it's just like twitchingout on me right now.
You know, this is the problemwith doing some of these things
(03:18):
live, and now I've got to goback and I've got to edit out
all the stuff, like where I talkneedlessly when I'm trying to
see what's happening?
No, it's a waves january 17thpodcast, whatever.
Okay, well, I'm just gonna keepit going, all right.
So what else do we have thatthat was available on the gaming
side?
There were some new rigs, lotsof ai, lots of talk about ai.
(03:40):
Nvidia did the keynote and andintroduced their new you know,
their new little mini PC.
That's, you know, incredible,for if if you're a developer, if
you're trying to replacesomething like a Raspberry Pi
and get something with a littlebit more horsepower, they had a
really cool product that was outthere and that was pretty
awesome.
What else did they have?
(04:01):
The Eureka area, eureka parkdownstairs?
I love that.
What else did they have theEureka area, eureka Park
downstairs?
I love that area and I got tospend some time going there,
which was really neat.
You could see all the differentcountries represented.
Dude, I saw this person fromCanada and I'm going to try and
(04:21):
get her on the podcast where shemade these tiny little Wi-Fi
antennas like the tiniest littleWi-Fi antennas, like the
tiniest little Wi-Fi antennasthat work from something like
300 megahertz all the way up to60 gigahertz or 40 gigahertz,
and they're so tiny and you canfit 100 of them on the size of a
stamp and it's used for Wi-Fior NRF communications or any of
that stuff or any of the things.
(04:43):
It's really, really neat, sowe're going to have her on the
show here pretty shortly.
Saw her at Eureka Park.
What else happened downstairsat Eureka Park Interesting?
I'm trying to think throughsome of the innovation, like
what pops off at the top of myhead, but that's a great area.
I didn't get a chance to walk it.
I was there on a shortenedamount of time.
I only got to spend two daysand it was stacked with meetings
because I was actually workingthis year, which is kind of neat
.
But I had some good meetingsfor what it's worth, if anybody
(05:05):
cares but the ones that I got todo on the side I had to chase
down and I found them.
I was talking to the CEO of BirdBuddy, one of my favorite
products ever.
Bird Buddy is a birdhouse witha camera with AI in it and
whenever a bird lands, it snapsa photo of it and it compares it
to a library of other birds andit tells you which birds have
visited your house and so forth.
(05:26):
I started backing them onKickstarter like two years ago,
and their CEO, frankie, washanging out at the show I think
that was his name and I got tomeet him and talk to him a
little bit and I said, hey, theproblem is that the solar panel
doesn't charge the battery theway that I needed to in shade,
because I don't put a birdfeeder out in the middle of the
sun, I put it underneath a treeand I'm having an issue.
(05:47):
And he said, yeah, it's notreally about solar, it's about
the battery and the discharge ofthe battery.
I was like, oh yeah, so I walkoff and I thought, well, dude,
it's because you're using Wi-Fiand you're sucking all the life
out of the battery, because thethe Bird Buddy booth and once
you know it, there's the dudefrom Morse Micro sitting there
having a conversation with theteam from Bird Buddy.
(06:07):
I was like I was totally comingover here to introduce you guys
.
But that led me into the MorseMicro booth and I'm so excited
about what Morse Micro is doing.
They made some announcementslast year talking about what
they have and what they're doing, and this year I got to get the
whole kit and caboodle therundown from them, and so if
(06:29):
you're watching on the podcast,you can see the screen.
They had a little koala sittingon top of one of their APs and
that was really neat to see,because they're Aussies, they're
from Australia, and the firstthing they did is they offered
me a Foster's oil can beer,which was great.
I didn't get one, though,because it was like eight
o'clock in the morning, nineo'clock in the morning, but
whatever.
Anyway, they got to show metheir new chip, and so if you're
(06:50):
looking at the screen right now, you see on the far right-hand
side that's the existing Wi-FiHalo chip that they have.
Operates in the 900 megahertzspectrum, can carry about 36
megabit per pretty freakingawesome at distances of 900
megahertz.
It uses Wi-Fi over 900, whichis really neat, so it's easy to
adapt to.
In the center, that tiny littlesquare that's their new chipset
(07:13):
for their new version, and onthe left-hand side you can see
the form factor of their newversion.
There's a USB-A version on thefar left and a USB-C version,
and it's so tiny that what yousee is the USB plug itself, and
that was pretty neat.
And here's some of the bigdifferences between the two.
The old one is 6x6 QFN, the newone is 5x5.
It has a USB interface.
On the far right-hand side youcan see that 43 megabit per
(07:36):
second.
They say max-fi throughput.
No SAW filter required on this,which is a little bit different
, but full certification fromFCC and CE.
But the big news is it's 23 dBm, which is pretty neat, coming
off their power amplifier.
So it's got a really cool,intelligent little power
amplifier in there and it does agood job.
Now, what you see on the screenhere is what I'm super excited
(07:57):
about and I hope I get one ofthese.
He didn't have one sitting inhis bag, but this is their
developer board and this isbasically everything that you
can do and every way tointerface with the Wi-Fi Halo
chipset on a single board thatyou can use, including.
It's got your host MC in themiddle.
You can connect via Bluetooth.
You've got your Halo chipset onthe far top right-hand corner.
(08:17):
It has a button, aptly labeledbutton.
It's got current sensor down onthe bottom right-hand side.
But if you're trying to come upwith a way to use Wi-Fi Halo
and it's something that you wantto work with, this developer
board from Morse Micro isavailable and it's really neat
and allows you to get going andget started with their
technology, which I think is so,so cool.
Instead of having to soldertiny little wires together, you
(08:41):
can just snap stuff in here.
It's pretty neat.
So it was great to see that, andit was also great to see the
ecosystem that popped out ofthis.
And they had a number ofdifferent products on display in
their booth that showed howpeople are using it.
And they had one that was likea drone landing pad for fires.
In the outback right inAustralia there's a little
(09:02):
yellow and black landing pad anda drone would come and land on
it and it would recharge or getits, you know, be docked there
and then would take off andthese things can go a bunch of
miles you know, five miles, sixmiles away and still have
communication using Wi-Fi, haloand be able to backhaul that
traffic at 30 to 40 megabit persecond, which is pretty awesome.
(09:24):
So great use cases with MorseMicro.
Really neat to see what theywere doing at the show.
It was really, really cool.
And then, on top of that, as Iwas looking through everything
check this out oh, that's thewrong one.
There we go.
As I was looking througheverything, they showed me this
Microtech device.
I was like what in the world isthis device?
And I looked at it, I was likethat's a form factor that I
(09:44):
hadn't seen, and so we picked itup.
Oh look, you can see in theleft-hand corner.
There you can see the littleblack and yellow drone landing
pad, but that Microtech device.
The cool part here is, if youlook at the left-hand side of
the device, it shows you that itsupports LTE, gps, wi-fi, poe,
ethernet 2, ethernet 1, andPower, and I was like, dude,
what else is in there?
So I went to look for it onMicrotech's website and I
(10:06):
couldn't see it because it lookslike it's unannounced thus far.
So there's your scoop If you'relooking for something cool.
Microtech has a device comingout with LTE, wi-fi, wi-fi, halo
and BLE all built into a singledevice that's powered by PoE.
That's pretty awesome and,knowing MicroTik, it's probably
gonna be pretty inexpensive aswell, so glad to see that.
(10:27):
The next group that I got to seewhen I was out there was Asia
RF.
I went by and I saw them to seewhat they were doing
specifically with Wi-Fi Halo,and they have a new product.
They have a couple new products, and the one that I got a hold
of that was really neat is I gotto see.
Let's see if we can load thisup.
So they've got their littleWi-Fi Halo chipsets and
(10:50):
everything, I guess.
Oh, here it is, right here,their Mesh Outdoor Gateway.
So this is their Wi-Fi HaloMesh Outdoor Gateway.
It's pretty awesome and it'sgot it built in.
But one of the neat thingsabout it is it's powered either
via PoE or via USB-C, so thatwas pretty cool.
If you're trying to get a hugedistance and you don't want to
run PoE, you can just plug in aUSB-C to it.
(11:12):
There was that, and then theyalso had the first push-to-talk
handset.
That doesn't look like it'slisted on their website, but
they had the first push-to-talkhandset.
It's an Android device thatuses Wi-Fi Halo for connectivity
.
So stop and think about that900 megahertz spectrum Wi-Fi
Halo in a PTT like the oldNextel phones.
(11:37):
And they didn't have it there,but I think on my Twitter
account I posted a link to it,or I at least posted a picture
that was there.
So that was pretty neat to see.
Glad to see those.
Oh yeah, here it is.
Look at this.
So let me bring it up realquick.
Azure F Corp.
There it is right there.
It's got PTT on the side andit's handheld.
It's called the ARF-HL Ranger,world's first Wi-Fi Halo robust
(11:58):
mobile based on Android 12,flexible functions with LTE 5G
walkie-talkie messenger throughWi-Fi Halo to reach more than
one kilometer I think it's onekilometer communication Is that
what it says?
So that's pretty neat.
I got to see it.
It wasn't turned on or anything.
That might have just been amock-up unit, but it was good to
see that people are using Wi-FiHalo for things that are bigger
(12:19):
.
Because the question comes downto this with Wi-Fi Halo Client
devices, use cases.
If Wi-Fi Halo is so great, whenare we going to start to see
that ecosystem being built outfor client devices and use cases
?
Because as I talk to you, I'mstaring at a Wi-Fi Halo device
sitting right in front of me, aWi-Fi Halo access point, and
they can mesh and they cancommunicate over long ranges,
(12:40):
but the killer apps are going tocome in the shape of their
ability to produce a clientecosystem, and right now there
may not be a lot, but as I movedinto the next week, I kept this
in the back of my head and so Ishowed up at NRF, the National
Retail Federation, nationalRetail Forum, I think it's
called Federation.
(13:00):
I walked the show floor thereand I saw all the IoT world.
It was this about IoT and thatabout IoT, but no one was
talking about Wi-Fi Halo withregards to IoT in that specific
instance, and I thought you know, that's what I want to see.
I want to see that use casegrow for people that are using
Wi-Fi Halo for IoT.
(13:20):
So, as the client devices come,I'm sure that we'll see more of
what's going on.
What else did I get to see overat CES?
This was a really, really neatone.
This one's called I don't knowif it's called Real Labels or
Realables.
Either way, this is prettyawesome.
So imagine a standard shippinglabel for UPS or FedEx or USPS,
(13:44):
whatever.
It is just a standard shippinglabel.
It's the same.
It's just a little bit thicker.
It's like if you stack two orthree of them on top of each
other.
This thing is an intelligentlabel in the sense that it has a
battery built into it and it'sgot a 5G or an NB-IoT
quote-unquote 5G chipset builtinto it as well.
They're telling me it's a $25label.
You buy it for 25 bucks, youprint out your packing label on
(14:05):
it, you slap it on your box, youship it off and you can track
your package.
It updates every 20 minutes forup to 30 days.
So if you're worried about ahigh-value item moving from
point A to point B, you buy oneof these labels.
It works with the standardlabel printer and you peel the
back of it off, it's got he onthese labels.
It works with the standardlabel printer and you peel the
(14:27):
back of it off, he has a whole.
I also asked these guys to jumpon the podcast as well, because
I want to know how they builtthe battery around this and what
that thing looks like on theinside.
But you peel it off, it's gotthe battery and it's got the 5G
chip in there.
You tap it.
It's got NFC.
So you tap it and you activateit and once you activate it, it
gives you that every 20-minuteupdate on what's going on the
app.
Everything's included in thecost so that you can track it
(14:48):
wherever you need to.
Very, very cool to be able todo that with a shipping label,
because I know I mean put it onyour luggage.
People are stuffing air tagsand everything's in their
luggage trying to figure outwhere stuff is.
So from a shipping perspective,I thought that this was pretty
neat.
Super stoked to see them at atCES and talk about the product
offering that they had.
(15:09):
I was very excited.
It was really neat, just kindof came out of the blue.
It was good to see them.
So Reelables Reelables,whatever you want to call them
they were there.
The other thing that I got tosee and this was really cool
because I had just done a littlebit of a podcast on this was
the Slate 7.
This is the new Wi-Fi 7 routerfrom GLInet and GLInet the good
(15:32):
life.
They were like the coolestpeople.
They were so nice.
We walked into their booth andI was elated to see the product.
We got hands-on with it.
We got to use the touchscreenthat's on the front of it.
My buddy Sean and I got toactually get hands-on.
We got to see what it was doing.
It's not available yet.
They said it'll be available infirst quarter 2025.
No word on the pricing yet, butvery, very cool to see them come
(15:54):
out with a Wi-Fi 7 device.
It looks very similar to theother travel router that they
have the Barrel AX right there.
So here's the Slate at Wi-Fi 6,the Slate Plus.
It's the same form factor asthis one right here in the
middle, but it features Wi-Fi 7.
I'm sure there's some otherneat things about the device
itself.
It's not online yet.
(16:15):
I don't see it online yet, butmaybe it will be.
Then, of course, is the Mangothe N300, the Mango one of my
favorite things in the entireindustry is on there.
But we got to see these guys,which was really neat.
They were super awesome.
They've got really cool littlemagnets, so happy to see their
product continuing to evolve.
So, from a Wi-Fi 7 perspective,an AP perspective, it was neat
(16:36):
to see them out there.
Now, the other thing this waspretty cool and this was, you
know, this played right into thenerd side is the Nordic
Semiconductor Thingy the Thingy91, a multi-sensor cellular IoT
prototype platform.
I took some really coolpictures of it.
Here's the PCB the front of thePCB.
Here's the back of the PCB.
It has all kinds of stuff in itand it's got.
(16:58):
Let's see the prototypingplatform for cellular IoT using
LTE-M NB-IoT GNSS.
It's ideal for proof of concept.
It's got Wi-Fi built into it.
It's got BLE built into it.
It has all kinds of stuff builtinto it and I got to play with
it and get hands-on.
I walked into the NordicSemiconductor booth.
I was like y'all just show mesomething cool.
I just want to see somethingcool and they're like check this
(17:19):
out, doesn't look like that'sgoing to load.
So I got a chance to gethands-on with this.
If you're looking for something, you're trying, this is a
really neat deal.
What they don't have on here isthey don't have their tracking
dashboard, their asset trackingdashboard, and it was pretty
awesome.
Once you go on the dashboard,it shows you a global view and
it shows you where it is.
It can't run, I guess, for 30days, like a shipping label can,
(17:43):
but if you connect this thingto a battery, I'm sure you can
do some pretty incredible stuffwith this no weird energy
harvesting, no weird stuff.
It's got a USB connector topower it up and this is the
Thingy 91.
But this is pretty.
It's pretty cool.
If you look at this.
It's certified globally.
It doesn't just work in NorthAmerica, it's global Multi-mold
LTE NB-IoT 72200 megahertz, 23dB in output power pretty
(18:09):
awesome.
64 megahertz, cortex-m33, aMegaFlash, 256k RAM, a BLE NFC
support, a logistics assetattracting smart city, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
So if you're looking for thingsto play with I guess that's
kind of the thing here If you'relooking for things to play with
, the Morse Micro developerboard, as well as the Nordic
thingy 91, those are pretty coollittle things that you can
prototype with and have a goodtime.
(18:30):
It was.
It was great to see them.
Another one of my favoritemanufacturers that was there.
That makes really fun boards toplay with is rack wireless.
I've done I've got one sittinghere somewhere I've done some
work with rack in the past usingtheir, you know, for their
laura wan stuff and they have Iforgot what they call them those
little caterpillar connectors,whatever they're called.
On the right hand side you cansee it there.
(18:50):
This is the.
Oh, what's it called?
This thing is called the.
Come on, come on, drew, you'llremember.
I can't remember what it'scalled.
They're little Riz Riz Raz, rizRiz Raz, wiz, wizmesh, that's
(19:11):
what it's called.
It.
The riz bro, the, the riz meshor whiz mess.
So I'm gonna screw it up now.
Whiz box is what it's called.
It's a developer platform.
This is the rack 4630,basically this, like lego for rf
nerds.
You can stack up components,gps and screens and and you know
, nbiot and whatever else youwant.
You can stack stuff up and usethis as your baseboard to get
(19:33):
into projects, and one of thethings that they had.
There was this group calledRocklin and they were showing
off all these weird things thatthey've done with WizBlock.
Right, here's their starter kitfor mesh, but they had all
these sensors.
They had sensors that go inyour walls to track for water
vapor or water.
They had solar node that youcould plug into it.
(19:56):
They've got alarms.
They've got every differentsensor that you can imagine.
Rockland has a really coolgroup of things that they've
made.
They also manufacture their ownproducts, and one of them this
is the Meshtastic Echo Wirelessmodule.
I think this is one of the onesthat they showed off there and
it's got you can send.
(20:16):
I believe this is the one youcan send messages back and forth
to each other.
So, in the spirit of playingwith stuff and prototyping
things and trying to figure outnew technologies that are out
there, rack Wireless was there.
They had their product, morsehad their product and then the
Nordic thingy.
Now, on top of all that, Ialmost got run over by Steve
Aoki, but that's okay.
(20:37):
I didn't have Steve Aoki on ascooter, on my bingo card or on
my checklist cruising throughCES, but he showed up and he put
on a hell of a party man.
He took over the Panasonicbooth on a demonstration for
techniques and turned it into arave, and if you weren't there
for that, I'm sad that youmissed it.
I didn't even see a lot ofpeople talking about it online,
(20:57):
but that was one of the coolermoments I've ever had at ces was
the panasonic booth.
Just, they just didn't care andthey turned up the speakers and
they turned up the music andthey just jammed and aoki threw
down a great set and had thewhole floor jumping up and down.
I can't imagine what it waslike to be a vendor with one of
the other manufacturers, man,because they were probably
pissed that that was going onbecause it was so loud and so
(21:22):
awesome all at the same time.
So that was neat.
Then I got the chance to goupstairs and go to a suite and
meet with the team from SparkMicrosystems.
This was so cool.
They are using ultra-widebandin a way that no one else is
using and they've channelizedultra-wideband so that they can
do things for super low-latencydevices like gaming mice, gaming
(21:47):
keyboards, headphones, lowlatency headphones, music
transmission and theirdemonstration was something that
I had never seen.
It was really cool.
They took a sound pad and onthat sound pad.
They had one audio path, likean output from the audio going
to direct to a speaker, and youwould tap the pad right and when
(22:09):
you tap it you'd hear it goboom, boom, boom.
You'd hear it make the noise.
Then they had another audiopath that went out across a
standard Bluetooth transmitterand receiver and when you would
tap it you would hear a delaybecause of the delay that
Bluetooth interjects.
So when you hit the pad,instead of just hearing pop, pop
, pop, you'd hear pop, pop, pop,pop, pop pop because of the
(22:30):
delay from that second one.
Then what they did is they hada switch where they flipped it
over and they ran it acrosstheir ultra-wideband and they
would tap on it again and therewas no significant difference.
I couldn't even tell just bylistening to it that it was
going across wireless versus thewire, whereas with Bluetooth I
could hear that delay.
So when they talk about thingsthat they've done and they're
(22:52):
talking about using UWB not justas a transmission mechanism for
location services, but as atransmission mechanism for audio
and for gaming, it was really,really cool and it was great to
see what they were doing with it, because they are using the
spectrum that people are usingthe spectrum, that people are
using the spectrum only for oneor two things right now, so it
(23:13):
was phenomenal to see them usingit for something entirely
different.
Three to 10 gig range.
Their channel widths aregreater than 500 megahertz.
It was really neat and I put ona pair of headphones that they
3D printed.
Let me see if I have that they3D printed and I was able to
walk around the room and theirlittle device was their little
transmitter.
Here it is right here on thescreen.
(23:34):
Their little transmitter waspretty cool because if it was
lit up green, it means I wascommunicating over UWB, but if I
got too far away or if Iobstructed it, then it would
flip over to BLE automatically.
Granted, it would addcompression to the music or it
would add a little bit oflatency.
But I was able to see and hearthe difference using UWB versus
using BLE and it was incredibleand the sound quality was great
(23:58):
and they even put on Zeppelin asthe track to listen to and they
showed a demonstration.
They had a guitar where theguitarist could play on the
guitar and it was transmittingvia UWB to the amplifier and you
couldn't discern any differencebetween them.
And here's oh, there you go.
Here's a picture of the demo.
So the demo, the way thatworked and they split it up, is
going to that JBL speaker on theedge.
(24:18):
It was so neat to see.
It was one of the cooler demosthat actually perfectly
articulated what they weretrying to get across.
So kudos to the team for makingthat happen.
They make this tiny littlechipset that can be integrated
into a number of differentdevices for UWB transmission.
This is the actual transmitterand antenna and they told me
they're like play with it, havefun.
(24:39):
So what I would do is I'd putmy hand in front of it to see if
it blocked the signal.
I'd actually grab the antennato see if it blocked the signal.
And it would.
And they were transferringstupendous amounts of data at
very, very, very low latency andonly consuming look at that two
and a half milliamps of poweron that device on transmission
(25:00):
and reception of it.
So very low power, extremelyhigh throughput, extremely low
latency.
So cool to see someone doingsomething different with this.
I mean, look at this, it's gotfive nanoseconds or less.
I mean it was really, reallyneat.
And again, I think the thingthat I liked about it it was.
(25:22):
I mean great, yeah, sound andgreat and keyboards and mice and
all that other stuff.
It wasn't even necessarilyabout that for me, as much as it
was about the fact that they'reusing Spectrum to do something
different than anybody else inthe space is using it for.
And I was like that's reallycool, because we heard about,
you know, corvo, and we heardabout Morse Micro and we hear
about, you know, manufacturersand vendors, cisco and all these
people putting UWB into theirdevices.
(25:44):
But it's like to do what it'slike to do real-time location
service.
Okay, that's cool, but, dude,that's a lot of spectrum, uwb
spectrum and there's a ton.
Look, 3.1 to 10.6 gigahertzrange.
Come on, man, you're talkingabout seven gig worth of
spectrum, almost Dude.
There's a lot that you can dowith that.
So for them to be able toutilize it in a way that we
(26:05):
hadn't seen before, that is whatsparked my interest with Spark
Microsystems.
So kudos to the team.
I really appreciate them takingthe time to show it to me.
30 minutes was the perfectamount of time for me to see
what was going on.
I'll also hopefully be bringingthem on the show here in the
future.
So if you have questions onsome of that.
Please just let me know.
Now, that's what I saw at CES,and CES was it's just such a
(26:27):
good show.
But it's just such a good show,but it's so much.
Man and I got to see the newera.
Wi-fi 7 devices were there andwe got to see how that
interacted and what the wholehome of the future looks like
Some really, really cool stuffhappening in the Amazon area,
too.
It was just neat to see all ofit come together the brisket
grill that you can throw a pieceof meat in and use AI to figure
out what the meat is and how tocook it AI to figure out what
(26:48):
the meat is and how to cook it.
It's like insane stuff.
That was there, but I didn'tsee anything that I was like, oh
, I've got to get that, I've gotto take it home, other than the
Lenovo pad for the Steam Deck.
I thought that was pretty neat.
However, with Nintendo comingright on the heels of that,
dropping their Switch 2, whatare you going to do?
So on to New York City and NRF.
The National Retail Federationwent over there and there were
(27:10):
some really neat pieces oftechnology, but, dude, I want to
say that there was probablymore AI at NRF than there was at
CES.
Every single vendor it feltlike had AI worked into their
name in some way shape or form,or in their booth or talking
about the benefits of it, and itwas even for someone who's
truly passionate abouttechnology, it was a bit much
man.
It was like, all right, tell meyour AI story.
(27:32):
And I'm usually not that guy,right, I appreciate when people
go out of their way to do someneat stuff, but it was like dude
, that's the story.
But it ended up that kind ofwas the story, to be honest,
because there were applicableuses of intelligence that people
could use to change theirretail interactions, and one of
the ones I liked I thought thatwas pretty cool is they had this
(27:57):
3D body scanner where you'd goand stand on a little pedestal
and it rotated you around and ittook a full 3D snapshot of you
and it blanked out your face andall the good stuff, and what it
did is it would tell you whatyour sizes were.
So it would size your shouldersit would size the length of your
torso and your arms and yourwaist and everything and your
shoulders, which size the lengthof your torso and your arms and
your waist and everything, andthen you can take that and apply
it to a profile and so you canput it on your Amazon profile,
for example, and then you can goshopping and it's only going to
(28:17):
show you the stuff that'sactually going to fit you.
And it talked about the waysthat retailers could utilize
technology like that to makeyour shopping experiences better
, so that you're not sittingthere trying to figure out
what's a good fit or not.
And then, obviously, that goesinto the whole stand in front of
the smart mirror and theclothes automatically appear on
you and you can buy it with yourvoice or tap online to buy it.
And we're reaching this pointwith retail.
(28:38):
That's really, really neat, andI thought part of the thing to
me of the transaction that wasmissing was the ability for the
computer to understand exactlywho I am and what I like and
what I don't like and what mysizes are, because I'm a big
dude.
If you've never met me in person, I'm like 6'5" and I got a
little belly on me, and sonothing ever fits right.
(28:59):
Everything is just like thismuch too short, it's always just
a little too short in the wrongplaces, and it's difficult for
me to find stuff that fits.
This is where, if Fresh CleanTees was my sponsor, I would
mention that their tall shirtsare perfect for tall dudes like
me.
I love it.
So if you guys will sponsor meand send me t-shirts, I'd
totally appreciate it.
(29:19):
Fresh Clean Tees, anyway, Ishould reach out to them.
Maybe not All 500 of you thatlisten I appreciate you
listening.
Go find your friends so I canget some cool sponsorships for
t-shirts.
But the idea you can take theinput and and give an input into
retail that you can take withyou and say, hey, this is me,
what do you have that fits?
(29:39):
Or loaded on a profile thatsays this these are my body
characteristics, what do youhave?
Only bring me the stuff thatmatters to me.
Don't, don't show me somethingthat I can't fit into anyway.
It sounds like more of a dudething, though.
Right, because when I goshopping with my wife and either
of my daughters, it's neverabout I don't know if it's ever
about it fitting or not fitting.
It's like, oh, this looksbetter, and then you try and
(30:01):
figure out how to make it fit.
I don't know, I'm not that dude, I'm just not that dude.
Shopping for me, I guess is alittle bit different, but seeing
real-life interactions with AIthere was cool.
And then, obviously, the JustWalk Out technology, where
people can walk into aconvenience store and wave their
(30:22):
hand or just walk out with aproduct and their hand was
always great to see.
There was something that Ithought was pretty neat and that
was the e-poster from Y-Charge.
Let me see if I can share myscreen here on this one.
I called it Cool Wireless Tech,and so what these guys had is
they had a I'll minimize thesemessages here they had this
(30:43):
display set up and on thatdisplay it was fed via wireless
power and content was uploadedvia Wi-Fi, and it was pretty
awesome to see.
I stood in front of this thingfor a little while, rubbing my
hand over it up and down to seehow quickly I could turn the
light off and how quickly itwould come back on.
So that was pretty neat to see.
(31:03):
But this was really coolbecause it was different.
It was a different take onwireless.
It wasn't just Wi-Fi but it wasabout taking a product and
putting it out on displayanywhere in a store that you
went to and using two wirelesstechnologies one via power and
one via data to update it, andso you get about 30 feet out of
it.
All the information is onwhitechargecom so you guys can
(31:25):
go look it up, but that was apretty cool product to see.
One of the other products that Iloved, man, was the chewable
coffee.
Oh God, I don't even rememberwhat it's called.
God, let me see if I can findit.
Man, these guys were awesome.
And here we go, dry brew.
There they are.
Look, dude, if you want to getripped on caffeine, I'm not even
(31:49):
lying.
This thing jacked me up, man.
I took one and they said thatit's like 25 milligrams and it's
like drinking a cup of coffeeand a chew.
And they didn't taste bad.
They taste like coffee.
They were great.
They're not that expensive, butfreaking, hang on, man, I ate
one of these.
I.
They're not that expensive butfreaking, hang on, man, I ate
one of these.
I was just like wow, the peopleI was with were freaking out.
(32:10):
They're like Drew, what did youjust eat?
I said I don't know.
Man, feeling freaking crazy.
It was pretty cool.
So if you want something that'san instant pick-me-up, it felt
like, check out Dry Brew Coffee.
They're pretty cool.
I'm going to buy a bunch andmaybe hand some of those out.
(32:33):
So that was pretty had nothingto do with actual technology,
but they were there and I got akick out of it.
So now you know what I knowabout dry brew coffee.
Let's see what else did we seeover at NRF?
This was pretty neat.
You know it's being a nerd.
This was MachineQ introduced anew sensor, that's their LoRaWAN
sensor, and it runs on 2.4 giglow power RF also, and what it
does is it has a GPIO interfacethat's like RS-232.
And it's one of those thingswhere you think hasn't someone
(32:57):
done this already?
But essentially what it does isit gives you the ability to
connect any port, you know, anyserial port into your LoRaWAN
network, and this is a big deal,right, and I love Machine Q.
You guys know that Special spotin my heart for the whole MQ
team over there.
But the problem is you get theequipment manufacturers that
(33:18):
make these pieces of equipmentand you want it to be connected.
It's like great, you have tobuy their gateway or you have to
buy their software or you haveto buy access to their API, and
so that's on one end of thespectrum.
The other end of the spectrumis it doesn't support anything
at all because it just has aserial port and there's no way
for you to get it onto yournetwork.
So you're dealing with oldpieces of equipment that have no
connectivity and there's no wayto interface, build an
(33:40):
interface that's hardware on oneside and RF on the other side.
So that's what they did.
It sounds like I said, itsounds dumb, it sounds like
hasn't someone done that?
But in fact there's probably afew out there, but this one
works on the MachineQ network.
So I was really happy to seethis.
Rs-232, 45, 5-volt TTL and GPIO.
(34:01):
There you go.
Simple, simple things.
It's the simple pleasures thatmake me happy.
So congratulations to MachineQfor getting that thing launched.
Yeah, that was the gist of NRFfor me.
Mine was stacked more withmeetings, which was phenomenal,
and New York is such a greatcity and just got to go to
dinner with some incrediblepeople and spend time with them
(34:23):
and just nerd out.
It was a really good time inNRF this year.
Not a lot of wireless people onthe show floor, but again, it's
not necessarily a wireless show, it's more of an ecosystem show
.
However, I did get to see myold crew from Cisco, so I got to
walk by their booth and seethem give presentations.
That was pretty neat.
I'm on meetings, it's good tosee you guys.
And then my booth was right nextto the Comcast business booth
(34:45):
and if you know me, you know Iworked there for five years and
so it was just like a big familyreunion hanging out with those
nerds, but always cool to seethem.
What else did we look at there?
I walked up and down the showfloor.
I didn't see anything thatreally stood out.
It was just so much AI, ai, ai.
But the real worldimplementations of it were neat
to see.
You know, last year I thoughtone of the coolest things was
(35:06):
the ability to do translation,real-time translation.
Those guys moved down to thefirst floor and settled on the
second floor this year, so thatwas a little weird to see.
But it was good to see a lot ofthe other people there.
Myst had a booth there.
Xtreme had a booth there withWi-Fi stands in it.
So extra points to the team atXtreme.
I know Meter some, but you guysgot to bring those out to the
trade show.
It was good to see so manyfriendly faces.
(35:28):
Now, other than that, there area couple of things going on that
I want to get to real quickbefore I end this one.
There's some stuff happening,as you know, in the US.
On Monday we get a newpresident and there's already
some stuff that's happeningwhere Senator Cruz has been put
in charge of a bunch of stuffand it's not just the Commerce
(35:52):
Committee I forgot whichcommittee he's in charge of.
There's a few of them there,but this is what hit me.
So one of the things that he'sadamantly and staunchly been
against for a while is schooldistricts and libraries lending
Wi-Fi hotspots to students viaE-rate E-rate in and of itself.
I'm terrified to know what'sgoing to happen via E-Rate E
-Rate in and of itself.
I'm terrified to know what'sgoing to happen to E-Rate over
the next couple of months.
And I think you should be too,if you're in education.
(36:13):
Make sure your voice is heard.
Call your congressmen, callyour senators, call the people
that can help get everyone tounderstand how important E-Rate
is to school districts and toeducation.
Now this right here, lendingWi-Fi hotspots to students via
E-rate I feel like this is alittle bit misaligned, but it's
just me.
Ted Cruz has argued the ruleviolates communication acts and
(36:36):
it opens up children to realrisks of abuse due to a lack of
limits on their broadband usage.
And you know, the conversation,right, is that if you have a
Wi-Fi hotspot and a kid can useit, then they can use it to
access anything, and then theydon't like that.
Well, dude, I mean, yes, right,obviously, couple that with
what's going on with Facebook,you know now saying that they're
(36:58):
going to release all thefilters, and X has released all
the filters.
It's not a good time to beonline for children, and I would
argue that, as a parent of fivewonderful children, it's up to
me as a parent, I think, to makesure that I block a lot of that
content.
But then what happens ifthey're on the carrier side?
So it's never been moreimportant to look at things like
(37:19):
Bark.
I love Bark.
Y'all know I love Bark Ifyou've ever listened to me or
the show I love Bark and it putsthe ability to do mobile device
management in the parents'hands for client devices that
are children's devices.
It's not enough to use theApple family stuff or the
Android family stuff to limitthe times that people go online.
You really need to dig intowhat people are doing, and the
(37:40):
only way to do that is, by usingan application that understands
what the children are doing andalerts you or blocks them from
doing things that can be harmfulto them.
I don't want to read everysingle text message that my
13-year-old daughter sends.
I don't, I don't, really Idon't.
I love her and I trust her andI want to make sure that
whatever she's doing is safe.
(38:01):
So I rely on Bark to tell melike hey, something came up and
it's not safe and you shouldhave a conversation with her
about it.
So it's never been moreimportant to keep an eye on your
kiddos.
If this goes away, this is abummer.
I mean the whole Wi-Fi hotspotsnot going to children because
of this dude.
You know, what really grinds mygears is the fact that there
(38:23):
was so much money and, granted,beat is now going through
everything but there was so muchmoney made available during
COVID for cities andmunicipalities and school
districts and whoever to deploythese free Wi-Fi networks and
free connectivity networks togive students the ability to get
online.
And now we're facing a timewhere that didn't happen.
People's problems didn't getsolved and the people that put
(38:44):
these hotspot Band-Aids on theirschool districts and cities are
about to realize how much of ascrew-up that was, and that's
money that was thrown away.
I mean, you're talking millionsof dollars in contracts that
went to carriers to lease or torent or to buy Wi-Fi hotspots in
their plans, and now there'snothing to show for it, man, and
it's so frustrating to see that.
So hopefully that's a goodlesson learned.
(39:06):
Sometimes the only way to learnis by going through it, but I
hope people realize that unlessyou own the infrastructure,
you're going to forever bepaying that infrastructure, and
so we'll see what happens there.
So I did want to talk aboutthat because just be wary of
what's happening at the FCC now.
Lord only knows.
And on that note, along withFCC, dudecc, dude, look at this.
(39:28):
So it wasn't, you know, itwasn't just the tp link is now
being investigated about chineseconnections and backdoor
hacking and whatnot, and huawei,you know, took it on the chin
and huawei is out of the us.
The rip and replace program iscoming.
But january 17th today, danoeditorial director over at Light
Readings says buy cells nowfaces a Huawei-sized security
(39:50):
problem.
Buy cells with direct ties toChina's reportedly under US
government investigation oversecurity concerns the same
situations that sparked the USto put Huawei on its blacklist.
Dude, all of this sucks rightfor communications, in my
opinion, and I'm not saying thatthis is right or it's wrong, or
it's good or it's bad.
What I'm saying is that thisjust sucks for communications
(40:12):
because Bicells makes equipment,just like Huawei makes
equipment and, granted, I reallyam not a fan of the Huawei
stuff because it's such a ripoffof Cisco, but Bicells makes
this equipment that's low costand it works relatively well and
it's pretty widely deployedequipment that's low cost and it
works relatively well and it'spretty widely deployed.
There's not a lot ofcompetition in that space.
To make radios that do what buycells does and the way that they
(40:33):
do it, and to know that this isprobably going to see the same
fate that huawei did and the tblink is probably going to see
that same fate also, it's like,dude, if this happens to buy
cells, there's not a lot ofradio vendors that we can look
at.
So you've got a few that areout there, you've got nokia,
you've got salona, you've gotsome of these other groups that
are making these 5g radios and Imean their market's about to
blow up.
It's, you know, good for them.
(40:54):
But, dude, there I didn'texpect buy sales man that's.
My heart goes out to that team.
But what are you gonna do?
What else do we have on here?
This is another one.
I was scanning the news over atLight Reading who will buy
Charter Dude?
I didn't even know that thiswas happening.
Granted, they're not for saleyet, right?
(41:14):
But good old Mike Dano rananother Light Reading article
here two days ago.
Analysts expect Comcast orT-Mobile to make a play for
Charter Communications becausethe incoming Trump
administration may be lenienttowards such mega transactions.
Communications because theincoming Trump administration
may be lenient towards such megatransactions.
Now, I don't know if there'sany truth to this, but the fact
that Mr Danu is reporting thisin light reading he's got better
(41:35):
connections in the industrythan I do.
I'm sure it's a hot debate andtopic in most financial circles.
Td Cohen, financial analyst,says we believe a Comcast
charter merger can makeindustrial logical sense given
the scale and subsequent massivesynergies.
Dude man, charcast, that's great, oh my gosh.
Well, I don't know.
(41:57):
We'll see the magenta factor.
T-mobile's making moves, man,you know.
So let's see what this means.
You know, next week isdefinitely going to usher in
Oops, I'm.
This means, you know, next weekis definitely going to usher in
oops, I'm looking at the wrongscreen.
There you go.
Next week is definitely goingto usher in some stuff and and
so we'll see comcast or t-mobilefor charcast.
I don't know, I don't know.
(42:18):
I guess we'll just wait and seeand see what happens there.
Last but not least, I thoughtthat this was a pretty neat one,
again scanning the news over alight reading australian is
promising to $1.9 billion tocomplete a full fiber national
broadband network.
So good for them, man, verycool.
Also note the awesomeadvertisements on this webpage.
(42:39):
Anyway, I love it.
That's great.
National broadband networkdelivering fiber, 622,000 FTTEM
premises upgraded to FTDP.
Very, very cool man.
So congratulations to them.
Last but not least, I'm goingto click on this little link
right here because at BroadbandBreakfast the other Drew and
(43:00):
Blake Ledbetter reporting onthis one that Hawaii is
announcing the plans to becomethe first fully fiber state in
the United States.
Congratulations to Hawaii.
I hope that that does wondersfor them.
Hawaiian telecom president SueShin from the Hawaii Business
Magazine, pictured here.
They're hoping to achieve agroundbreaking landmark to be
the first in the world atdeploying all fiber optic across
(43:23):
their entire state.
So that should be really cool.
Look at that $1.7 billioninvestment to go Hawaiian.
And then you look at Australiangovernment and look at that.
Theirs is a $1.85 billioninvestment Lots of billions
going into this.
So I'm going to use that as asegue to talk about next week.
Next week I'm in town for acouple days and then I'm getting
(43:44):
on an airplane and I'm going toHawaii.
I'll be in Hawaii for the nexttwo weeks.
After next week I'm takingwaves to the waves.
I'm going to be participatingwith Eero offering free Wi-Fi at
the World Surfing LeagueChampionships and it's going to
be really fun.
So I don't know if it's goingto last all two weeks I'm down
there.
It might only last a coupledays.
(44:05):
I'm learning a whole lot aboutsurfing.
I had no idea about surfing,but I'm learning how it's done
and it should be really, reallyneat.
So I'm looking forward to that.
I'm looking forward to gettingthe show down there.
I don't know what's to come ofit.
I'm gonna take some coolpictures and post them up.
If you have any questions aboutwhat I'm doing and how I'm
doing it, please reach out,because I'm building a temporary
(44:26):
event network for this event.
We're setting up on North ShoreBonsai Pipeline free Wi-Fi from
Eero all over the World SurfingLeague Championship.
It's going to be dope.
We've got the VIP sectionthat's going to be covered.
We've got the vendor areathat's going to be covered.
It's going to be super sweet tosee all that come together.
So looking forward to that.
I know WSL is looking forwardto it.
Also, I get to rub shoulderswith some people that are much
(44:55):
more surfer looking than I am,and the last thing my
47-year-old butt needs to do isgo on top of a surfboard.
But I'll stick to my waves.
They can stick to theirs.
That being said, I hope you allhave a wonderful weekend.
It's a three-day weekend foreveryone.
Monday is a day for the UnitedStates.
It's Martin Luther King Jr Day,so make sure you think about
MLK.
It's also a presidentialinauguration that's happening
that day, and it's also a dayoff for a lot of people.
(45:17):
So if you're in the States,just relish in Americanism and
enjoy your three-day weekend,and we'll talk to you all next
week, and I hope to have somegreat interviews for you coming
up, based on some of the peopleI talked to at CES and RF.
So, all that being said, thisis fun.
I enjoyed going over everything.
If you have any questions orcomments or concerns or whatever
(45:38):
.
Drop me a message.
You know how to get in touchwith me.
Find me online at Wireless Nerdfrom the Waves Podcast.
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