The device I wish some would build but nobdy is …
note: I had this whole post just about written when I saw this. Seemed like a shame to waste it. Here it is…
Everybody is rushing to put as many applications into one device. We have phones that take pictures, play music, play video. PDA, that double as phones, pagers, that double as PDA. This leads has lead us to a soup of wireless devices that might do one thing well, and others not so well.
The backpack disk drive. The drive is really like a mini fileserver, that could be mounted on ANY digital device. It should have a USB 2.0 and a fast Ethernet port. It should be bluetooth enabled. It should be a flash memory / magnetic hybrid drive (30+ GB), and a Lithium batter that should allow 24 continuous hours of use.
The backpack drives gives you a central, portable media storage. That can sync with your iPods, mp3 players, cameras, PDAs, blackberries, phones and any new digital device that could dreamed up. You could simple sync it with desktop, and then sync with all of your devices as needed. It would just need to be bluetooth enabled. (I realize that not all of the devices come with bluetooth. bare with me this is a fantasy.)
The secrete is it being enabled with some ubiquitous wireless technology. For the purposes of this article I will just call it bluetooth. The idea is that the backpack drive stays in the backpack. you never see it, or touch until you get home.
Hop in the car and turn on your bluetooth enabled car stereo (another device that should have hit the show room by now) and sync up with the backpack drive to get podcasts, today’s playlists. Hours and hours of music goodness with NO commercials.
You can go on vacation or to your child’s piano recital, with your bluetooth enabled camcorder. Never have to worry about how much memory you brought again. When particular shot is over just “push” it back to the BPD.
You finally get on the train, and settle in to for your 45 minute commute to the city. You pull out the bluetooth mp3 player. You pull in a soothing playlist of late 80 & early 90 hip hop from the BPD.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:38 am
I’m intrigued by this. I’ve got some ideas…
Couldn’t this be done with a small/cheap laptop? Start with a low power laptop, add a readily available battery pack and undervolt or underclock the processor to squeeze the most out of the available power (shouldn’t take too much processor power to serve up files). Slap on a USB bluetooth 2.0 adapter, shove it all into a backpack and you’re ready to test run. It’d be huge, but it’s a start.
After this, it’s just a matter of getting the software to run/synch without your intervention. Or hack a small interface somewhere easily accessible without removing the contents of the bag. Additionally, security would have to be addressed (don’t want your backpack broadcasting personal information to just anyone.)
Why carry an MP3 player when all you need are Stereo BT headphones? The backpack could have a built in MP3 player. Then, a car stereo that has a BT handsfree feature could possibly work or some sort of BT->line in adapter…
What am I missing?
January 1st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
One possibility would be to install a BlueOnyx in one of these…
http://lightningpacks.com/index.html
Sadly, he doesn’t have a commercial version ready for market yet.
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
You guys are missing the point. The backpack drive woudln’t be (the size of an backpack, more like the size of 30 Gig iPod. It would go in your back pack or brief case and you would not need, to physically handle the device you use it. The BlueOnyx the only thing that qualifies to be what I called the BackPack drive.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
[...] geeks. Another “backpack drive” to come out this Spring — BH @ 02/02/2007 11:58:38 Here I thought that nobody was making the one missing (and to me obvious) mobile device and I just came [...]