It’s no accident that the conference rooms at Vocera Communications headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., are named after characters from the Star Trek universe–Kirk, Spock and Picard.
Just as the communicators that Captain Kirk carried down to alien planets in the 1960s version of the Viacom TV show foreshadowed a world with ubiquitous mobile telephones, the two-ounce badge central to the Vocera Communications System was inspired at least in part by the “com badges” that appeared on later versions of the show. Just as Captain Picard would do, Vocera badge wearers can touch the slim device they wear on their uniforms, say who they want to talk to and, assuming that person is wearing his badge, be connected.
The badge contains two chips, one a digital signal processor chip from Texas Instruments, the other a fairly unremarkable wi-fi radio not terribly dissimilar from those found in any Wi-Fi networking card used in a laptop PC. The TI chip handles all the voice processing and the wi-fi radio transmits them up to a computer network.
That’s where the real work takes place. Hitting the badge button and saying a name triggers a powerful server-based application that matches the name spoken with a database entry. It then locates that person on the network, activates their badges and starts the conversation, which takes place using Voice-Over-Internet Protocol or VOIP–meaning the voices are converted to bits and transmitted over a computer network.
now HOW cool is that…
source: SlashDot
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