Waves with Wireless Nerd
Join me for a weekly look into what's making waves in tech and the wireless industry! What's new? What's now? What's next?
Waves with Wireless Nerd
CES & NRF: Wireless Breakthroughs, IoT Marvels, and Retail Tech Trends for 2025 & Beyond
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
even better, check, check, check, one, two, one, two. Hello, hello, hello. Good afternoon everybody. It's drew linds, the wireless nerd. 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, and it's been two crazy weeks, what.
Speaker 1:This is how the year always starts off, though. Right, I mean, you've got Christmas and you've got the holidays, and then it dumps right into New Year's and right after that it's like let's get on 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 come home and you take a deep breath, and then this and then that and the WLPC, and then this and that, and, oh, very exciting. Hope everybody is having an exciting 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 is what's new, what's now, what's next, what's happening in the wireless industry? And there's some stuff happening in the wireless industry. Not a lot of news breaking in the last couple of weeks, but I guess that's. You know, ces tends to do that, right, it just dominates every cycle of product and everything else that we have going on. So that's where we're going to start today. Gonna check my audio levels. Good, that sounds fantastic.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's start with CES. I hope some of y'all went to CES. I saw some of y'all at CES. I got to hang out with Mr Sean Bender and if you know Bender, he's such a cool dude, he's such a 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 user group for Kansas City. So if you're looking for help with Amazon Web Services and AWS, he's the dude to talk to over there. 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 see golly, the people from Morse Micro and the people from Asia RF, and it was just. It was a lot of fun and I think you know I wrote a little bit of an article and I posted it on LinkedIn, talking about some of the big takeaways from CES this year and every year there's new products, there's new TVs and 8K TVs the size of a freaking wall, and you know there's like every gadget, you can possibly get your hands on Some of the neat stuff that I saw.
Speaker 1:I like the lenovo replacement for the steam deck. I thought that that was pretty boss man. I think that's going to be a winner this year that that'll end up in one of my backpacks. However, I also just saw the new nintendo switch 2 trailer or advertisement or whatever and that's coming out. Looks like february 4th, so I'm stoked about that. That thing actually looks pretty neat and then I can play games with my kids on it. So that that was there.
Speaker 1:Let's see what else. What else do we have? Oh man, this thing says it stopped streaming. You know, I don't trust this very much. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work. Give them what they want, give them what they need. Oh yeah, look there. You know, I don't understand this. It says it's not streaming. Well, whatever, let's just keep going. Let's keep going and see what happens. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now it's just like twitching out on me right now. You know, this is the problem with doing some of these things live, and now I've got to go back and I've got to edit out all the stuff, like where I talk needlessly when I'm trying to see what's happening? No, it's a waves january 17th podcast, whatever. Okay, well, I'm just gonna keep it going, all right.
Speaker 1:So what else do we have that that was available on the gaming side? There were some new rigs, lots of ai, lots of talk about ai. Nvidia did the keynote and and introduced 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 replace something like a Raspberry Pi and get something with a little bit more horsepower, they had a really cool product that was out there and that was pretty awesome. What else did they have? The Eureka area, eureka park downstairs? I love that. What else did they have the Eureka area, eureka Park downstairs? I love that area and I got to spend some time going there, which was really neat. You could see all the different countries represented.
Speaker 1:Dude, I saw this person from Canada and I'm going to try and get her on the podcast where she made these tiny little Wi-Fi antennas like the tiniest little Wi-Fi antennas, like the tiniest little Wi-Fi antennas that work from something like 300 megahertz all the way up to 60 gigahertz or 40 gigahertz, and they're so tiny and you can fit 100 of them on the size of a stamp and it's used for Wi-Fi or NRF communications or any of that stuff or any of the things. It's really, really neat, so we're going to have her on the show here pretty shortly. Saw her at Eureka Park. What else happened downstairs at Eureka Park Interesting? I'm trying to think through some of the innovation, like what pops off at the top of my head, but that's a great area.
Speaker 1:I didn't get a chance to walk it. I was there on a shortened amount of time. I only got to spend two days and it was stacked with meetings because I was actually working this year, which is kind of neat. But I had some good meetings for what it's worth, if anybody cares but the ones that I got to do on the side I had to chase down and I found them.
Speaker 1:I was talking to the CEO of Bird Buddy, one of my favorite products ever. Bird Buddy is a birdhouse with a camera with AI in it and whenever a bird lands, it snaps a photo of it and it compares it to a library of other birds and it tells you which birds have visited your house and so forth. I started backing them on Kickstarter like two years ago, and their CEO, frankie, was hanging out at the show I think that was his name and I got to meet him and talk to him a little bit and I said, hey, the problem is that the solar panel doesn't charge the battery the way that I needed to in shade, because I don't put a bird feeder out in the middle of the sun, I put it underneath a tree and I'm having an issue. And he said, yeah, it's not really about solar, it's about the battery and the discharge of the battery. I was like, oh yeah, so I walk off and I thought, well, dude, it's because you're using Wi-Fi and you're sucking all the life out of the battery, because the the Bird Buddy booth and once you know it, there's the dude from Morse Micro sitting there having a conversation with the team from Bird Buddy. I was like I was totally coming over here to introduce you guys. But that led me into the Morse Micro booth and I'm so excited about what Morse Micro is doing.
Speaker 1:They made some announcements last year talking about what they have and what they're doing, and this year I got to get the whole kit and caboodle the rundown from them, and so if you're watching on the podcast, you can see the screen. They had a little koala sitting on top of one of their APs and that was really neat to see, because they're Aussies, they're from Australia, and the first thing 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, nine o'clock in the morning, but whatever. Anyway, they got to show me their new chip, and so if you're looking at the screen right now, you see on the far right-hand side that's the existing Wi-Fi Halo chip that they have. Operates in the 900 megahertz spectrum, can carry about 36 megabit per pretty freaking awesome at distances of 900 megahertz. It uses Wi-Fi over 900, which is really neat, so it's easy to adapt to.
Speaker 1:In the center, that tiny little square that's their new chipset for their new version, and on the left-hand side you can see the form factor of their new version. There's a USB-A version on the far left and a USB-C version, and it's so tiny that what you see is the USB plug itself, and that was pretty neat. And here's some of the big differences between the two. The old one is 6x6 QFN, the new one is 5x5. It has a USB interface. On the far right-hand side you can see that 43 megabit per second. They say max-fi throughput. No SAW filter required on this, which is a little bit different, but full certification from FCC 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 a good job.
Speaker 1:Now, what you see on the screen here is what I'm super excited about and I hope I get one of these. He didn't have one sitting in his bag, but this is their developer board and this is basically everything that you can do and every way to interface with the Wi-Fi Halo chipset on a single board that you can use, including. It's got your host MC in the middle. You can connect via Bluetooth. You've got your Halo chipset on the far top right-hand corner. It has a button, aptly labeled button. It's got current sensor down on the bottom right-hand side. But if you're trying to come up with a way to use Wi-Fi Halo and it's something that you want to work with, this developer board from Morse Micro is available and it's really neat and allows you to get going and get started with their technology, which I think is so, so cool. Instead of having to solder tiny little wires together, you can just snap stuff in here. It's pretty neat.
Speaker 1:So it was great to see that, and it was also great to see the ecosystem that popped out of this. And they had a number of different products on display in their booth that showed how people are using it. And they had one that was like a drone landing pad for fires. In the outback right in Australia there's a little yellow and black landing pad and a drone would come and land on it and it would recharge or get its, you know, be docked there and then would take off and these things can go a bunch of miles you know, five miles, six miles away and still have communication using Wi-Fi, halo and be able to backhaul that traffic at 30 to 40 megabit per second, which is pretty awesome. So great use cases with Morse Micro. Really neat to see what they were doing at the show. It was really, really cool.
Speaker 1:And then, on top of that, as I was looking through everything check this out oh, that's the wrong one. There we go. As I was looking through everything, they showed me this Microtech device. I was like what in the world is this device? And I looked at it, I was like that's a form factor that I hadn't seen, and so we picked it up. Oh look, you can see in the left-hand corner. There you can see the little black and yellow drone landing pad, but that Microtech device. The cool part here is, if you look at the left-hand side of the device, it shows you that it supports LTE, gps, wi-fi, poe, ethernet 2, ethernet 1, and Power, and I was like, dude, what else is in there? So I went to look for it on Microtech's website and I couldn't see it because it looks like it's unannounced thus far. So there's your scoop If you're looking for something cool. Microtech has a device coming out with LTE, wi-fi, wi-fi, halo and BLE all built into a single device that's powered by PoE. That's pretty awesome and, knowing MicroTik, it's probably gonna be pretty inexpensive as well, so glad to see that.
Speaker 1:The next group that I got to see when I was out there was Asia RF. I went by and I saw them to see what 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 got to see. Let's see if we can load this up. So they've got their little Wi-Fi Halo chipsets and everything, I guess. Oh, here it is, right here, their Mesh Outdoor Gateway. So this is their Wi-Fi Halo Mesh Outdoor Gateway. It's pretty awesome and it's got it built in. But one of the neat things about it is it's powered either via PoE or via USB-C, so that was pretty cool. If you're trying to get a huge distance and you don't want to run PoE, you can just plug in a USB-C to it.
Speaker 1:There was that, and then they also had the first push-to-talk handset. That doesn't look like it's listed on their website, but they had the first push-to-talk handset. It's an Android device that uses Wi-Fi Halo for connectivity. So stop and think about that 900 megahertz spectrum Wi-Fi Halo in a PTT like the old Nextel phones. 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.
Speaker 1:Glad to see those. Oh yeah, here it is. Look at this. So let me bring it up real quick. Azure F Corp. There it is right there. It's got PTT on the side and it's handheld. It's called the ARF-HL Ranger, world's first Wi-Fi Halo robust mobile based on Android 12, flexible functions with LTE 5G walkie-talkie messenger through Wi-Fi Halo to reach more than one kilometer I think it's one kilometer 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 a mock-up unit, but it was good to see that people are using Wi-Fi Halo for things that are bigger.
Speaker 1:Because the question comes down to this with Wi-Fi Halo Client devices, use cases. If Wi-Fi Halo is so great, when are we going to start to see that ecosystem being built out for client devices and use cases? Because as I talk to you, I'm staring at a Wi-Fi Halo device sitting right in front of me, a Wi-Fi Halo access point, and they can mesh and they can communicate over long ranges, but the killer apps are going to come in the shape of their ability to produce a client ecosystem, and right now there may not be a lot, but as I moved into the next week, I kept this in the back of my head and so I showed up at NRF, the National Retail Federation, national Retail Forum, I think it's called Federation. I walked the show floor there and I saw all the IoT world. It was this about IoT and that about IoT, but no one was talking about Wi-Fi Halo with regards to IoT in that specific instance, and I thought you know, that's what I want to see. I want to see that use case grow for people that are using Wi-Fi Halo for IoT. So, as the client devices come, I'm sure that we'll see more of what's going on.
Speaker 1:What else did I get to see over at CES? This was a really, really neat one. This one's called I don't know if it's called Real Labels or Realables. Either way, this is pretty awesome. So imagine a standard shipping label for UPS or FedEx or USPS, whatever. It is just a standard shipping label. It's the same. It's just a little bit thicker. It's like if you stack two or three of them on top of each other.
Speaker 1:This thing is an intelligent label in the sense that it has a battery built into it and it's got a 5G or an NB-IoT quote-unquote 5G chipset built into it as well. They're telling me it's a $25 label. You buy it for 25 bucks, you print out your packing label on it, you slap it on your box, you ship it off and you can track your package. It updates every 20 minutes for up to 30 days. So if you're worried about a high-value item moving from point A to point B, you buy one of these labels. It works with the standard label printer and you peel the back of it off, it's got he on these labels. It works with the standard label printer and you peel the back of it off, he has a whole.
Speaker 1:I also asked these guys to jump on the podcast as well, because I want to know how they built the battery around this and what that thing looks like on the inside. But you peel it off, it's got the battery and it's got the 5G chip in there. You tap it. It's got NFC. So you tap it and you activate it and once you activate it, it gives you that every 20-minute update on what's going on the app. Everything's included in the cost so that you can track it wherever you need to. Very, very cool to be able to do that with a shipping label, because I know I mean put it on your luggage. People are stuffing air tags and everything's in their luggage trying to figure out where stuff is. So from a shipping perspective, I thought that this was pretty neat.
Speaker 1:Super stoked to see them at at CES and talk about the product offering that they had. I was very excited. It was really neat, just kind of came out of the blue. It was good to see them. So Reelables Reelables, whatever you want to call them they were there.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I got to see and this was really cool because I had just done a little bit of a podcast on this was the Slate 7. This is the new Wi-Fi 7 router from GLInet and GLInet the good life. They were like the coolest people. They were so nice. We walked into their booth and I was elated to see the product. We got hands-on with it. We got to use the touchscreen that's on the front of it. My buddy Sean and I got to actually get hands-on. We got to see what it was doing. It's not available yet. They said it'll be available in first quarter 2025.
Speaker 1:No word on the pricing yet, but very, very cool to see them come out with a Wi-Fi 7 device. It looks very similar to the other 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 as this one right here in the middle, but it features Wi-Fi 7. I'm sure there's some other neat things about the device itself. It's not online yet. I don't see it online yet, but maybe it will be. Then, of course, is the Mango the N300, the Mango one of my favorite things in the entire industry is on there. But we got to see these guys, which was really neat. They were super awesome. They've got really cool little magnets, so happy to see their product continuing to evolve. So, from a Wi-Fi 7 perspective, an AP perspective, it was neat to see them out there.
Speaker 1:Now, the other thing this was pretty cool and this was, you know, this played right into the nerd side is the Nordic Semiconductor Thingy the Thingy 91, a multi-sensor cellular IoT prototype platform. I took some really cool pictures of it. Here's the PCB the front of the PCB. Here's the back of the PCB. It has all kinds of stuff in it and it's got. Let's see the prototyping platform 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 built into it and I got to play with it and get hands-on.
Speaker 1:I walked into the Nordic Semiconductor booth. I was like y'all just show me something cool. I just want to see something cool and they're like check this out, doesn't look like that's going to load. So I got a chance to get hands-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 is they don't have their tracking dashboard, their asset tracking dashboard, 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 30 days, like a shipping label can, but if you connect this thing to a battery, I'm sure you can do some pretty incredible stuff with this no weird energy harvesting, no weird stuff. It's got a USB connector to power 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 North America, it's global Multi-mold LTE NB-IoT 72200 megahertz, 23 dB in output power pretty awesome. 64 megahertz, cortex-m33, a MegaFlash, 256k RAM, a BLE NFC support, a logistics asset attracting smart city, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you're looking for things to play with I guess that's kind of the thing here If you're looking for things to play with, the Morse Micro developer board, as well as the Nordic thingy 91, those are pretty cool little things that you can prototype with and have a good time.
Speaker 1:It was. It was great to see them. Another one of my favorite manufacturers that was there. That makes really fun boards to play with is rack wireless. I've done I've got one sitting here somewhere I've done some work with rack in the past using their, you know, for their laura wan stuff and they have I forgot what they call them those little caterpillar connectors, whatever they're called.
Speaker 1:On the right hand side you can see it there. This is the. Oh, what's it called? This thing is called the. Come on, come on, drew, you'll remember. I can't remember what it's called. They're little Riz Riz Raz, riz Riz Raz, wiz, wizmesh, that's what it's called. It. The riz bro, the, the riz mesh or 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 you want. You can stack stuff up and use this as your baseboard to get into projects, and one of the things that they had.
Speaker 1:There was this group called Rocklin and they were showing off all these weird things that they've done with WizBlock. Right, here's their starter kit for mesh, but they had all these sensors. They had sensors that go in your walls to track for water vapor or water. They had solar node that you could plug into it. They've got alarms. They've got every different sensor that you can imagine. Rockland has a really cool group of things that they've made. They also manufacture their own products, and one of them this is the Meshtastic Echo Wireless module. I think this is one of the ones that they showed off there and it's got you can send. I believe this is the one you can send messages back and forth to each other. So, in the spirit of playing with stuff and prototyping things and trying to figure out new technologies that are out there, rack Wireless was there. They had their product, morse had their product and then the Nordic thingy.
Speaker 1:Now, on top of all that, I almost got run over by Steve Aoki, but that's okay. I didn't have Steve Aoki on a scooter, on my bingo card or on my checklist cruising through CES, but he showed up and he put on a hell of a party man. He took over the Panasonic booth on a demonstration for techniques and turned it into a rave, and if you weren't there for that, I'm sad that you missed it. I didn't even see a lot of people talking about it online, but that was one of the cooler moments I've ever had at ces was the panasonic booth. Just, they just didn't care and they turned up the speakers and they turned up the music and they just jammed and aoki threw down a great set and had the whole floor jumping up and down. I can't imagine what it was like to be a vendor with one of the other manufacturers, man, because they were probably pissed that that was going on because it was so loud and so awesome all at the same time. So that was neat.
Speaker 1:Then I got the chance to go upstairs and go to a suite and meet with the team from Spark Microsystems. This was so cool. They are using ultra-wideband in a way that no one else is using and they've channelized ultra-wideband so that they can do things for super low-latency devices like gaming mice, gaming keyboards, headphones, low latency headphones, music transmission and their demonstration was something that I had never seen. It was really cool. They took a sound pad and on that sound pad. They had one audio path, like an output from the audio going to direct to a speaker, and you would tap the pad right and when you tap it you'd hear it go boom, boom, boom. You'd hear it make the noise. Then they had another audio path that went out across a standard Bluetooth transmitter and receiver and when you would tap it you would hear a delay because 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 delay from that second one. Then what they did is they had a switch where they flipped it over and they ran it across their ultra-wideband and they would tap on it again and there was no significant difference. I couldn't even tell just by listening to it that it was going across wireless versus the wire, whereas with Bluetooth I could hear that delay.
Speaker 1:So when they talk about things that they've done and they're talking about using UWB not just as a transmission mechanism for location services, but as a transmission 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 using the spectrum, that people are using the spectrum only for one or two things right now, so it was phenomenal to see them using it for something entirely different. Three to 10 gig range. Their channel widths are greater than 500 megahertz. It was really neat and I put on a pair of headphones that they 3D printed. Let me see if I have that they 3D printed and I was able to walk around the room and their little device was their little transmitter. Here it is right here on the screen. Their little transmitter was pretty cool because if it was lit up green, it means I was communicating over UWB, but if I got too far away or if I obstructed it, then it would flip over to BLE automatically. Granted, it would add compression to the music or it would add a little bit of latency. But I was able to see and hear the difference using UWB versus using BLE and it was incredible and the sound quality was great and they even put on Zeppelin as the track to listen to and they showed a demonstration. They had a guitar where the guitarist could play on the guitar and it was transmitting via UWB to the amplifier and you couldn't discern any difference between them. And here's oh, there you go. Here's a picture of the demo. So the demo, the way that worked and they split it up, is going to that JBL speaker on the edge. It was so neat to see. It was one of the cooler demos that actually perfectly articulated what they were trying to get across. So kudos to the team for making that happen.
Speaker 1:They make this tiny little chipset that can be integrated into a number of different devices for UWB transmission. This is the actual transmitter and antenna and they told me they're like play with it, have fun. So what I would do is I'd put my hand in front of it to see if it blocked the signal. I'd actually grab the antenna to see if it blocked the signal. And it would. And they were transferring stupendous amounts of data at very, very, very low latency and only consuming look at that two and a half milliamps of power on that device on transmission and reception of it. So very low power, extremely high throughput, extremely low latency.
Speaker 1:So cool to see someone doing something different with this. I mean, look at this, it's got five nanoseconds or less. I mean it was really, really neat. And again, I think the thing that I liked about it it was. I mean great, yeah, sound and great and keyboards and mice and all that other stuff. It wasn't even necessarily about that for me, as much as it was about the fact that they're using Spectrum to do something different than anybody else in the space is using it for. And I was like that's really cool, because we heard about, you know, corvo, and we heard about Morse Micro and we hear about, you know, manufacturers and vendors, cisco and all these people putting UWB into their devices.
Speaker 1:But it's like to do what it's like 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 gigahertz range. Come on, man, you're talking about seven gig worth of spectrum, almost Dude. There's a lot that you can do with that. So for them to be able to utilize it in a way that we hadn't seen before, that is what sparked my interest with Spark Microsystems. So kudos to the team. I really appreciate them taking the time to show it to me. 30 minutes was the perfect amount of time for me to see what was going on. I'll also hopefully be bringing them on the show here in the future. So if you have questions on some of that. Please just let me know.
Speaker 1:Now, that's what I saw at CES, and CES was it's just such a good show. But it's just such a good show, but it's so much. Man and I got to see the new era. Wi-fi 7 devices were there and we got to see how that interacted and what the whole home of the future looks like Some really, really cool stuff happening in the Amazon area, too. It was just neat to see all of it come together the brisket grill that you can throw a piece of meat in and use AI to figure out what the meat is and how to cook it AI to figure out what the meat is and how to cook it. It's like insane stuff. That was there, but I didn't see anything that I was like, oh, I've got to get that, I've got to take it home, other than the Lenovo pad for the Steam Deck. I thought that was pretty neat. However, with Nintendo coming right on the heels of that, dropping their Switch 2, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:So on to New York City and NRF. The National Retail Federation went over there and there were some really neat pieces of technology, but, dude, I want to say that there was probably more AI at NRF than there was at CES. Every single vendor it felt like had AI worked into their name in some way shape or form, or in their booth or talking about the benefits of it, and it was even for someone who's truly passionate about technology, it was a bit much man. It was like, all right, tell me your AI story. And I'm usually not that guy, right, I appreciate when people go out of their way to do some neat stuff, but it was like dude, that's the story. But it ended up that kind of was the story, to be honest, because there were applicable uses of intelligence that people could use to change their retail interactions, and one of the ones I liked I thought that was pretty cool is they had this 3D body scanner where you'd go and stand on a little pedestal and it rotated you around and it took a full 3D snapshot of you and it blanked out your face and all the good stuff, and what it did is it would tell you what your sizes were.
Speaker 1:So it would size your shoulders it would size the length of your torso and your arms and your waist and everything and your shoulders, which size the length of your torso and your arms and your waist and everything, and then you can take that and apply it to a profile and so you can put it on your Amazon profile, for example, and then you can go shopping and it's only going to show you the stuff that's actually going to fit you. And it talked about the ways that retailers could utilize technology like that to make your shopping experiences better, so that you're not sitting there trying to figure out what's a good fit or not. And then, obviously, that goes into the whole stand in front of the smart mirror and the clothes automatically appear on you and you can buy it with your voice or tap online to buy it. And we're reaching this point with retail. That's really, really neat, and I thought part of the thing to me of the transaction that was missing was the ability for the computer to understand exactly who I am and what I like and what I don't like and what my sizes are, because I'm a big dude.
Speaker 1:If you've never met me in person, I'm like 6'5" and I got a little belly on me, and so nothing ever fits right. Everything is just like this much too short, it's always just a little too short in the wrong places, and it's difficult for me to find stuff that fits. This is where, if Fresh Clean Tees was my sponsor, I would mention that their tall shirts are perfect for tall dudes like me. I love it. So if you guys will sponsor me and send me t-shirts, I'd totally appreciate it. Fresh Clean Tees, anyway, I should reach out to them. Maybe not All 500 of you that listen I appreciate you listening. Go find your friends so I can get some cool sponsorships for t-shirts.
Speaker 1:But the idea you can take the input and and give an input into retail that you can take with you and say, hey, this is me, what do you have that fits? Or loaded on a profile that says this these are my body characteristics, what do you have? Only bring me the stuff that matters to me. Don't, don't show me something that I can't fit into anyway. It sounds like more of a dude thing, though. Right, because when I go shopping with my wife and either of my daughters, it's never about I don't know if it's ever about it fitting or not fitting. It's like, oh, this looks better, and then you try and 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 a little bit different, but seeing real-life interactions with AI there was cool. And then, obviously, the Just Walk Out technology, where people can walk into a convenience store and wave their hand or just walk out with a product and their hand was always great to see.
Speaker 1:There was something that I thought was pretty neat and that was the e-poster from Y-Charge. Let me see if I can share my screen here on this one. I called it Cool Wireless Tech, and so what these guys had is they had a I'll minimize these messages here they had this display set up and on that display it was fed via wireless power and content was uploaded via Wi-Fi, and it was pretty awesome to see. I stood in front of this thing for a little while, rubbing my hand over it up and down to see how quickly I could turn the light off and how quickly it would come back on. So that was pretty neat to see. But this was really cool because it was different. It was a different take on wireless. It wasn't just Wi-Fi but it was about taking a product and putting it out on display anywhere in a store that you went to and using two wireless technologies one via power and one via data to update it, and so you get about 30 feet out of it. All the information is on whitechargecom so you guys can go look it up, but that was a pretty cool product to see.
Speaker 1:One of the other products that I loved, man, was the chewable coffee. Oh God, I don't even remember what it's called. God, let me see if I can find it. Man, these guys were awesome. And here we go, dry brew. There they are. Look, dude, if you want to get ripped on caffeine, I'm not even lying. This thing jacked me up, man. I took one and they said that it's like 25 milligrams and it's like drinking a cup of coffee and a chew. And they didn't taste bad. They taste like coffee. They were great. They're not that expensive, but freaking, hang on, man, I ate one of these. I. They're not that expensive but freaking, hang on, man, I ate one of these. I was just like wow, the people I was with were freaking out. They're like Drew, what did you just eat? I said I don't know. Man, feeling freaking crazy. It was pretty cool. So if you want something that's an instant pick-me-up, it felt like, check out Dry Brew Coffee. They're pretty cool. I'm going to buy a bunch and maybe hand some of those out. So that was pretty had nothing to do with actual technology, but they were there and I got a kick out of it. So now you know what I know about dry brew coffee.
Speaker 1:Let's see what else did we see over at NRF? This was pretty neat. You know it's being a nerd. This was MachineQ introduced a new sensor, that's their LoRaWAN sensor, and it runs on 2.4 gig low power RF also, and what it does is it has a GPIO interface that's like RS-232. And it's one of those things where you think hasn't someone done this already? But essentially what it does is it gives you the ability to connect any port, you know, any serial port into your LoRaWAN network, and this is a big deal, right, and I love Machine Q. You guys know that Special spot in my heart for the whole MQ team over there.
Speaker 1:But the problem is you get the equipment manufacturers that make these pieces of equipment and you want it to be connected. It's like great, you have to buy their gateway or you have to buy their software or you have to buy access to their API, and so that's on one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is it doesn't support anything at all because it just has a serial port and there's no way for you to get it onto your network. So you're dealing with old pieces of equipment that have no connectivity and there's no way to interface, build an interface that's hardware on one side and RF on the other side. So that's what they did. It sounds like I said, it sounds dumb, it sounds like hasn't someone done that? But in fact there's probably a few out there, but this one works on the MachineQ network. So I was really happy to see this. Rs-232, 45, 5-volt TTL and GPIO. There you go. Simple, simple things. It's the simple pleasures that make me happy. So congratulations to MachineQ for getting that thing launched.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was the gist of NRF for me. Mine was stacked more with meetings, which was phenomenal, and New York is such a great city and just got to go to dinner with some incredible people and spend time with them and just nerd out. It was a really good time in NRF this year. Not a lot of wireless people on the show floor, but again, it's not necessarily a wireless show, it's more of an ecosystem show. However, I did get to see my old crew from Cisco, so I got to walk by their booth and see them give presentations. That was pretty neat. I'm on meetings, it's good to see you guys.
Speaker 1:And then my booth was right next to the Comcast business booth and if you know me, you know I worked there for five years and so it was just like a big family reunion hanging out with those nerds, but always cool to see them. What else did we look at there? I walked up and down the show floor. I didn't see anything that really stood out. It was just so much AI, ai, ai. But the real world implementations of it were neat to see. You know, last year I thought one of the coolest things was the ability to do translation, real-time translation. Those guys moved down to the first floor and settled on the second floor this year, so that was a little weird to see. But it was good to see a lot of the other people there. Myst had a booth there. Xtreme had a booth there with Wi-Fi stands in it. So extra points to the team at Xtreme. I know Meter some, but you guys got to bring those out to the trade show. It was good to see so many friendly faces.
Speaker 1:Now, other than that, there are a couple of things going on that I want to get to real quick before I end this one. There's some stuff happening, as you know, in the US. On Monday we get a new president and there's already some stuff that's happening where Senator Cruz has been put in charge of a bunch of stuff and it's not just the Commerce Committee I forgot which committee 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's adamantly and staunchly been against for a while is school districts and libraries lending Wi-Fi hotspots to students via E-rate E-rate in and of itself. I'm terrified to know what's going to happen via E-Rate E -Rate in and of itself. I'm terrified to know what's going to happen to E-Rate over the next couple of months. And I think you should be too, if you're in education. Make sure your voice is heard. Call your congressmen, call your senators, call the people that can help get everyone to understand how important E-Rate is to school districts and to education. Now this right here, lending Wi-Fi hotspots to students via E-rate I feel like this is a little bit misaligned, but it's just me.
Speaker 1:Ted Cruz has argued the rule violates communication acts and it opens up children to real risks 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 use it, then they can use it to access anything, and then they don'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 going to release all the filters, and X has released all the filters. It's not a good time to be online for children, and I would argue that, as a parent of five wonderful children, it's up to me as a parent, I think, to make sure that I block a lot of that content. But then what happens if they're on the carrier side? So it's never been more important to look at things like Bark.
Speaker 1:I love Bark. Y'all know I love Bark If you've ever listened to me or the show I love Bark and it puts the ability to do mobile device management in the parents' hands for client devices that are children's devices. It's not enough to use the Apple family stuff or the Android family stuff to limit the times that people go online. You really need to dig into what people are doing, and the only way to do that is, by using an application that understands what the children are doing and alerts you or blocks them from doing things that can be harmful to them. I don't want to read every single text message that my 13-year-old daughter sends. I don't, I don't, really I don't. I love her and I trust her and I want to make sure that whatever she's doing is safe. So I rely on Bark to tell me like hey, something came up and it's not safe and you should have a conversation with her about it. So it's never been more important to keep an eye on your kiddos.
Speaker 1:If this goes away, this is a bummer. I mean the whole Wi-Fi hotspots not going to children because of this dude. You know, what really grinds my gears is the fact that there was so much money and, granted, beat is now going through everything but there was so much money made available during COVID for cities and municipalities and school districts and whoever to deploy these free Wi-Fi networks and free connectivity networks to give students the ability to get online. And now we're facing a time where that didn't happen. People's problems didn't get solved and the people that put these hotspot Band-Aids on their school districts and cities are about to realize how much of a screw-up that was, and that's money that was thrown away. I mean, you're talking millions of dollars in contracts that went to carriers to lease or to rent or to buy Wi-Fi hotspots in their plans, and now there's nothing to show for it, man, and it's so frustrating to see that. So hopefully that's a good lesson learned. Sometimes the only way to learn is by going through it, but I hope people realize that unless you own the infrastructure, you're going to forever be paying that infrastructure, and so we'll see what happens there. So I did want to talk about that because just be wary of what's happening at the FCC now. Lord only knows. And on that note, along with FCC, dudecc, dude, look at this. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just the tp link is now being investigated about chinese connections 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 is coming.
Speaker 1:But january 17th today, dano editorial director over at Light Readings says buy cells now faces a Huawei-sized security problem. Buy cells with direct ties to China's reportedly under US government investigation over security concerns the same situations that sparked the US to put Huawei on its blacklist. Dude, all of this sucks right for communications, in my opinion, and I'm not saying that this is right or it's wrong, or it's good or it's bad. What I'm saying is that this just sucks for communications because Bicells makes equipment, just like Huawei makes equipment and, granted, I really am not a fan of the Huawei stuff because it's such a ripoff of Cisco, but Bicells makes this equipment that's low cost and it works relatively well and it's pretty widely deployed equipment that's low cost and it works relatively well and it's pretty widely deployed. There's not a lot of competition in that space.
Speaker 1:To make radios that do what buy cells does and the way that they do it, and to know that this is probably going to see the same fate that huawei did and the tb link is probably going to see that same fate also, it's like, dude, if this happens to buy cells, there's not a lot of radio vendors that we can look at. So you've got a few that are out there, you've got nokia, you've got salona, you've got some of these other groups that are making these 5g radios and I mean their market's about to blow up. It's, you know, good for them. But, dude, there I didn't expect 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.
Speaker 1:I was scanning the news over at Light Reading who will buy Charter Dude? I didn't even know that this was happening. Granted, they're not for sale yet, right? But good old Mike Dano ran another Light Reading article here two days ago. Analysts expect Comcast or T-Mobile to make a play for Charter Communications because the incoming Trump administration may be lenient towards such mega transactions. Communications because the incoming Trump administration may be lenient towards such mega transactions. Now, I don't know if there's any truth to this, but the fact that Mr Danu is reporting this in light reading he's got better connections in the industry than I do. I'm sure it's a hot debate and topic in most financial circles. Td Cohen, financial analyst, says we believe a Comcast charter merger can make industrial logical sense given the scale and subsequent massive synergies.
Speaker 1:Dude man, charcast, that's great, oh my gosh. Well, I don't know. 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 is definitely going to usher in Oops, I'm. This means, you know, next week is definitely going to usher in oops, I'm looking at the wrong screen. There you go. Next week is definitely going to usher in some stuff and and so we'll see comcast or t-mobile for charcast. I don't know, I don't know. I guess we'll just wait and see and see what happens there.
Speaker 1:Last but not least, I thought that this was a pretty neat one, again scanning the news over a light reading australian is promising to $1.9 billion to complete a full fiber national broadband network. So good for them, man, very cool. Also note the awesome advertisements on this webpage. Anyway, I love it. That's great. National broadband network delivering fiber, 622,000 FTTEM premises upgraded to FTDP. Very, very cool man. So congratulations to them. Last but not least, I'm going to click on this little link right here because at Broadband Breakfast the other Drew and Blake Ledbetter reporting on this one that Hawaii is announcing the plans to become the first fully fiber state in the United States. Congratulations to Hawaii. I hope that that does wonders for them. Hawaiian telecom president Sue Shin from the Hawaii Business Magazine, pictured here. They're hoping to achieve a groundbreaking landmark to be the first in the world at deploying all fiber optic across their entire state. So that should be really cool. Look at that $1.7 billion investment to go Hawaiian. And then you look at Australian government and look at that. Theirs is a $1.85 billion investment Lots of billions going into this.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to use that as a segue to talk about next week. Next week I'm in town for a couple days and then I'm getting on an airplane and I'm going to Hawaii. I'll be in Hawaii for the next two weeks. After next week I'm taking waves to the waves. I'm going to be participating with Eero offering free Wi-Fi at the World Surfing League Championships and it's going to be really fun. So I don't know if it's going to last all two weeks I'm down there. It might only last a couple days.
Speaker 1:I'm learning a whole lot about surfing. I had no idea about surfing, but I'm learning how it's done and it should be really, really neat. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to getting the show down there. I don't know what's to come of it. I'm gonna take some cool pictures and post them up. If you have any questions about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, please reach out, because I'm building a temporary event network for this event. We're setting up on North Shore Bonsai Pipeline free Wi-Fi from Eero all over the World Surfing League Championship. It's going to be dope. We've got the VIP section that's going to be covered. We've got the vendor area that's going to be covered. It's going to be super sweet to see all that come together. So looking forward to that. I know WSL is looking forward to it. Also, I get to rub shoulders with some people that are much more surfer looking than I am, and the last thing my 47-year-old butt needs to do is go on top of a surfboard. But I'll stick to my waves. They can stick to theirs.
Speaker 1:That being said, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. It's a three-day weekend for everyone. Monday is a day for the United States. It's Martin Luther King Jr Day, so make sure you think about MLK. It's also a presidential inauguration that's happening that day, and it's also a day off for a lot of people. 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 some great interviews for you coming up, based on some of the people I talked to at CES and RF. So, all that being said, this is fun. I enjoyed going over everything. If you have any questions or comments or concerns or whatever. Drop me a message. You know how to get in touch with me. Find me online at Wireless Nerd from the Waves Podcast.
