Data Storage Implant - WIP

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  • | else there's not really a point in having the device implanted at all is there

    Honestly, I don't see the benefit of this project if you had to wear a charger everytime you want to access wour data...
    You could just put the un-tempered-with WiFi USB stick inside your wallet and have it available at any time. The whole idea pf this project is that you can access your data at any time anywhere and that you'll never loose/forget it. That's why I think being able to turn it on for at least two hours on one charge is a necessity.

    Or am I seing this wrong?

  • "Honestly, I don't see the benefit of this project if you had to wear a charger everytime you want to access wour data..."

    You have to have an external device to access the data no matter what. You can't directly access it or display on your arm. You should only need to power data storage when you access it. Anything else is excess.
  • @Cathasach yeah, sure, but it's one thing if I have to take out my phone, tap my arm and are able to transfer files in notime, or if I have to deploy an armband, a powerbank AND your phone to do this. Having to bring so much stuff with you defies the idea of having the storage implanted, don't you think?
  • If you all have finished beating the wearables vs. implants horse to death, I have something to propose. It is by no means a completed idea or concept, and probably deserves its own thread with regards to the details, but the concept of external power supply might be the way to go with this one. Not an arm band, because that would get in the way.

    The principle you'd be using to supply power is Resonant Inductive Coupling (LINK). It's less efficient than regular inductive coupling, but an article(No sources, so I can't say how reliable the information is. LINK) says that the range is about 5 meters, and can transfer 5-50 watts at 80% efficiency. Not great. Not horrible either. @ThomasEgi could say whether that's enough to run a data storage device. So, you can have transmitters set up in your workplace, and/or house for accessing it there, and have a wearable power supply that can run your data storage, and whatever else you want to power. Eventually you could turn that into an implant too.
  • I saw a video once, I'll see if I can find it, with prototype wireless power tech, used in a wireless mouse and keyboard, beams power at least a couple feet from the computer display to the peripherals, allowing them to be used without batteries at all. I thought it was amazing. That was like 6 years ago. Now all we have is this short range directional Qi charging stuff, and that's the best we've got.

    My goal with the implant was to be more secure. The Qi standard charger to power it is about as standard and commonplace as you'd find for a suitable external power source. So if you did show up somewhere and needed access to your data and didn't have your charger with you, this would be the best thing to use to allow for locating a power source nearby. Otherwise, they're off-the-shelf products at most electronics stores for under $15.

    If someone has a better idea for a power source that is actually functional, let me know. I'm open to alternatives, particularly if it's implanted and/or doesn't require routine external power to access the data.

    Alternatively, if someone wants to devise a way to "plug" an implant into something externally, that'd be great too.

    As for the argument for carrying a flash drive in your wallet... well... you can still forget or lose that. And it can be stolen. Far less secure than in an implant. Unless you're storing state secrets on it and people know it's implanted, in which case you're potentially putting yourself in harms way by having it implanted instead of in your wallet.

    However, I assume none of you are working for the CIA. If by chance you are, hit up someone at DARPA for me and find me a better wireless energy transmission tech. Thanks.
  • edited March 2017
    Turns out it's not that easy to find a six year old video about what may have been a faux technology prototype when all you remember about it is the video itself, not the title, or uploader.
  • edited March 2017
    I would suggest unless absolutely needed not to add any other microcontrollers to what is already present in the base circuitry. A Qi-kit should probably work without, and a battery indicated should be buildable with basic passive components.

    If you want to replace the circuitry, there's lots of integrated solutions that are a microprocessor and Wifi host at once, you really don't want to build a PCB and solder those components all on seperately (especially an arduino, that's huge and unnecessary for what you want to do).
  • The Arduino just fell best into what I would say I'm more or less experienced with, if you have another prebuilt solution, I'd love to hear it.
  • There were lots of new chipsets in the lasz few years for IoT projects that often feature integrsted BLE or WiFi.
    For example I know the ESP8266:
    https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266

    You can see how tiny it is on the development boards alfeady.
    There are other microcontrollers that are smaller than this but don't have connectivity, like the ones that srduino actually uses on their boards (AVR family / ATtiny).

    What exactly is your plan for hardware configuration now again though? What tasks should the microcontroller be handling?
  • The new ESP32 has both Bluetooth and WiFi, is dirt cheap, and will have the support of the ESP8266 in a couple of months I bet. It has a ton of bells and whistles that might be useful for this project.
  • You know, it seems like the hardware you have chosen, it is great, but you may run into limitations with the proprietary nature of the wifi access and related software. Have you looked into what hacks might exist to make it more opensource?

    You have the prerequisite hardware... SD card and wifi. I would imagine that making it more functional, on the software side, might be beneficial... especially if you end up running into limitations with the size accepted or other facets of the hardware. Fortunately, reverse engineering, hacking and re-purposing this technology has likely already been done, or could be done easily.

    I'm not sure how much help I may be in this area, but I could offer some assistance. You may not value the change much and be fine with the proprietary provided access, but do imagine that there could be myriad benefits from opening up the platform and using the wifi, say, to just freely advertise the contents of the memory freely to any device that could connect via wifi and browse it the same way it would be if it had been inserted into the device directly, or was an accessible drive shared across any standard network.

    What you might be looking at here is running some very, very tiny version of Linux that just mounts the SD card and handles basic networking authentication and sharing, across several devices and platforms (utilizing maybe Samba for Windows-based devices).

    Not saying it will not work with the default software provided, just to reiterate, but that moving to an opensource platform may offer some benefits and make this device have a bit more longevity and functionality. Take that with a grain of salt though, as I'm speaking from very limited knowledge of what the proprietary software is capable of. 
  • I still think this is a good concept. Needs some polishing but I love the idea of a secure data vault kept on my person.

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